Cricket ground's pride of place enthuses Forest School pupils

Pitch's location makes games a "huge summer event"

You might call it The Battle of Epping Forest, if Genesis hadn’t written that already.

Incredibly, in an epic match at Forest School in June, a visiting Kiwi batter scored 338 and his side still somehow lost the match.

It was the first two-day game played at Forest for many years, and Xavier Bell, captain of St Peter’s School, Cambridge, New Zealand, hammered the triple-hundred in a second innings of 534, but such was Forest's determination that they still chased down 248 to win the game by two wickets, Aiyush Aiyar leading the chase with 65.

The game, like so many at Forest, was live-streamed, and has been watched back by more than 2,000 viewers on YouTube.

It was part of a stellar Cricket Week at Forest also involving schools from Australia and South Africa.

But it is just one strand in among considerable development going on at Forest School at the moment.

"Our main ground is still at the school, encircled by all the buildings that have gone up," says head of cricket Tomos Fowler.

"When we have 1st XI matches there, all the school come out to watch and it becomes quite a huge summer event in the entire school.

"We have a little walk through the forest to the school playing fields, to The Park, where there are three squares currently, and a new training square is being put in, and we’re having a massive £3m multi-sport pavilion put in, with lots of changing rooms, plus a café and viewing area.

"We're hoping it could be a really good hub and allow us to forge partnerships with neighbouring counties and clubs, to both make some additional revenue but also support local community clubs out of term-time."

The school's indoor cricket centre has just been resurfaced and refurbished, too.

The Under-12 boys and Under-13 girls won the Essex Cup, and the Under-17s got to the last six nationally.

Other than the core summer fixture programme, Forest has "a huge winter training programme" and the carrot of biennial tours to venues such as Dubai, Barbados, Cape Town and Sri Lanka.

Fowler adds: "Forest is a strong academic school – we just lodged the best GCSE and A Level results in the school's history – but sport is as well supported as it can be.

"Cricket is one of our strongest pulling points compared to other schools in the area."