Oxfordshire Cricket is proud to announce that two of our rising talents, Alfie Smethurst and Nikhil Nair, took part in the World Junior League Under-18s, a competition founded and co-owned by Adil Rashid where the world’s top under-18 talents come together to compete.

Their participation is a significant achievement for the players and they should be proud to have competed in such a prestigious tournament.

Alfie’s selection came on the back of a recent call up to the Sussex CCC Academy. Alfie ended as the second highest wicket taker in the competition and is currently playing cricket out in Australia over the Winter. After the tournament Alfie said: 

“It was really great to be in the inaugural U18s tournament, the standard was unbelievable and it really made you think a lot deeper about how you go about playing t20 cricket especially when playing guys who have skill sets that you haven’t really been as exposed to. Alongside that, having the support of two high class coaches in Gemaal Hussain and Amar Rashid was really awesome as they gave a lot of experienced insight. The tournament in general has given me a lot of confidence and a lot of things to take away and work on.”

Nikhil had a fantastic season at Oxfordshire scoring over 350 runs and taking 19 wickets in the U18 setup. On top of that, he made a few appearances for our County Men’s second team showing his growth. After his participation in the World Junior League, Nikhil said: 

“An amazing initiative and an incredibly rare opportunity to play against the best of our age across the globe. The WJL presented plenty of challenges e.g. playing in day/night conditions and playing back to back games.” 

At Oxfordshire Cricket, we take enormous pride in seeing homegrown players earn opportunities such as this. Alfie and Nikhil’s selections are the result of the commitment from themselves, their families, coaches, clubs, and teammates across the county.

Matthew Barnes – Performance Director at Oxfordshire Cricket said:

“The World Junior League U18 competition provided Alfie and Nikhil with a global stage, where they gained invaluable experience in away conditions and tasted the structure of franchise-based competition against their peers from across the world. It has been rewarding to follow their progress in the World Junior League and to hear that they thoroughly enjoyed the experience.”