It was an early start for the keen cricketers of Newlands Intermediate. We all piled into the school van to head to Ian Galloway park to compete in the first day of the Max Charles trophy.

Max Charles was a student of Newlands Intermediate who tragically passed away, he was an awesome cricketer and a really nice boy who made sure everyone was always included. This is a yearly competition between different schools. This year we competed against Karori, Tawa and Raroa.

Our first match was against Tawa, the strongest team in the competition and last year's champions. The match didn’t go in favour of us and they put on a big total and we batted too slow. Two batters in the other team got 50 and Maddox Falconer got 48*. We didn’t get that close but we played well. Our next match was against Karori school we batted first and put on a good total with Jonty Joseph 53*. When we bowled they needed 8 of 12 and thanks to Kruttesh he only got one run off his amazing over and we ended up winning by one run. We were lucky we didn’t lose. 

The next day we all arrived at the same time, it had rained overnight and we didn’t know if cricket was on. When Mr Turner came into the room with the news, everyone listened closely and he explained that we would have a later game but we would still play. We arrived at Linden Park to play Raroa. This was the decider who made the final to play Tawa. We kept Raroa to a decently low score and we knew we had a good chance but we lost too many wickets. We still had a chance later on thanks to Gerhard’s 36 but we couldn’t maintain the run rate and we didn’t get the total. 

Our final match was against Karori for 3rd place. We batted first and put on a good total thanks to Maddox’s 51. When we bowled our opening bowlers, bowled excellently and we won convincingly.

Tawa took the win this year beating Raroa in the final. We arrived outside the club rooms for the presentation of the trophy, Jeff Charles said a few words about who this trophy was in honour of, then he presented it to Tawa. Overall it was a great two days of cricket with lots of competitive games and a friendly atmosphere.