Alfrink College from Zoetermeer emerged as the inaugural champions of the Bilingual Schools Cricket Challenge as eight regional qualifiers battled it out on the national finals day at Salland�s Schootveld ground in Deventer on Thursday.

Playing through a succession of showers, one of them of sub-tropical intensity, the teams of eight players, who had won through from four regional tournaments back in May, contested three hard-fought rounds of group matches, with Over Betuwe College from Bemmel and Alfrink coming through undefeated to meet in the final.

As anyone involved in education knows, a summer vacation inevitably takes its toll of what was learned before it, and there were clear signs of rustiness as pupils and teachers once again struggled with cricket�s intricate demands in the opening matches of the day.

But the learning curve was steep, and skills learned in the spring quickly returned. It was particularly satisfying to see bowling actions improving markedly in the course of the day: hardly anyone took advantage of the option of bowling underarm, and some pupils used their entire lunch break for much-needed practice.

Others studied the actions on display in the World T20 match between Sri Lanka and New Zealand which they could watch in the Salland clubhouse, and then went back outside to put what they had seen into effect.

By the final round baseball pitching had become a thing of the past, and the umpires had no need to act on their threat to impose a team penalty on those who were not really trying to develop a legal action.

As in the regional tournaments, the format of the matches involved four pairs of batters, each facing two overs. Runs were scored normally apart from a bonus run every time the ball was hit outside the inner circle, while each wicket lost cost the batting side five runs. Each side started with 200 runs on the board.

Despite the slippery and at times miserable conditions all the games were keenly contested, and some of the fielding would not have disgraced teams with much greater experience.

In Group A, where Over Betuwe College defeated in succession De Nassau Scholengemeenschap (Breda), Cals College (Nieuwegein) and Maasland College (Oss), the other three schools won a match each in what proved to be the more closely competitive of the two groups.

Group B opened with a local derby, in which Pius X College (Almelo) avenged their defeat in the North-East regional final by beating RSG Noord-Oost Veluwe (Epe) by 24 runs, while Alfrink inflicted a 9-run defeat on ORS Lek en Linge (Culemborg).

Champions of the Central Region, Lek en Linge went through the day without a win, but they were involved in some of the closest matches: not only did they push the eventual champions all the way, but they lost by the same margin to Pius X, who finished second in the group.

The final was an excellent contest, with the outcome in doubt almost to the end. Batting first, Alfrink posted a reasonably challenging total of 247, helped by the fact that they only lost three wickets in the course of their eight overs.

Over Betuwe College began promisingly in reply, but then lost three wickets in the space of seven deliveries, and were never able to make up the deficit. They lost three more in the following three overs, and despite a flurry of runs towards the end they finished 15 runs short.

The winning Alfrink squad was: Jelle Dijkstra, Quillan Gierum, Kishen Kanhai, Cherees Klint, Mitchell Maaskant, Jelle Schrijver, Benthe Smithuis, Jeroen Verveld, Stein Willems, and Matthijs Windmeijer.

In the remaining final round matches Cals College beat Pius X to claim third place, RSG Noord-Oost Veluwe finished fifth by beating De Nassau, while Maasland College avoided the wooden spoon with a victory over Lek en Linge.

All in all, the first year of the Bilingual Schools Challenge has been a considerable success, with teachers in more than 30 secondary schools learning the fundamentals of the game and passing them on to more than a thousand pupils. 28 schools contested the four regional tournaments, and with support from the KNCB and many of its member clubs, cricket is now embedded in those schools� English-based curriculum.

The challenge for Dutch cricket is to ensure that as many as possible of those who have been introduced to the game continue to play it, but it is an encouraging sign that in those schools as many as 30% of pupils are already choosing cricket as their optional sport.

If the enthusiasm and talent on display in Deventer on Thursday are any guide, the day may not be too far off when someone becomes the first product of the Schools Challenge to represent their country at cricket.