Warwickshire under 19s cricketer and John Willmott School pupil Amy Jones recently enjoyed a trip of a lifetime - to South Africa!

The John Willmott School PTFA were proud to be able to help Amy as one of her sponsors during this marvellous tour. Well done on such a wonderful achievement!

Amy has kindly put her experience into words for the PTFA and along with some terrific photographs has given us an insight into her journey.

My trip to South Africa

By Amy Jones

When I first found out that I had been selected to tour South Africa with Warwickshire U19's Cricket squad I was really excited and couldn’t wait to go.

On Wednesday 19th March I left my house at 3.15am to leave for Birmingham airport, I was really excited! My mom and me arrived at departures and met up with the rest of the team and their parents.

After we handed over our luggage we had 2 hours to kill, my plan was to sleep. We boarded the plane at about 6.00 and 12 hours later and a stop off at Amersterdam we arrived at Cape Town airport, we were here!

We collected our luggage and I went off with the team to a district house where we were staying for the first night before the transfer to Bishops school in he morning. We arrived at the district house at around 1.00am and we were greeted with tea and cakes. After that we went straight to bed. It was hard to sleep knowing I was actually in cape town after all the build up leading to the trip, I was actually here.

The next day after breakfast and our team meeting we went for a 2 hour training session to acclimatize, it was so hot!! We had been given re-hydration drinks which taste disgusting but they were vital if we were to perform at out best in these conditions. The atmospheric pressure out there meant that the ball, once it got to its highest point would drop suddenly, that got a lot of getting used to.

After training we went straight to Bishops school, an affluent boys private school. The grounds were huge and there were around 6 cricket pitches. We had lunch and then we went to one of the pitches for game situation training.

The tournament began the next day and we played a South African team Boland, we won the game quite convincingly and then went on to play the other two South Africa teams, South West District and Western Province.

We won both games. We then met Boland again in the Semi finals, we batted first and scored over 200 runs we then bowled them all out to bag a place in the final.

We were all really excited about being in the final because we were by far the youngest team and no one had expected us to get this far, so being in the final was an achievement in itself. We played the only New Zealand side, Wellington, in the final. Yet again we won the toss and batted first, we got over 200 runs again and bowled them all out for under 100. We had won against the odds!

We also experienced the poor side of South Africa and we visited a township called Langa. It was hard to get to terms with how the people there were living; their houses were made from metal sheets and were about the size of our garden shed. The people there were really friendly and happy despite the conditions they were living in. Its times like this where you really appreciate what you have. As we were driving through the township the coach just went silent everybody was just quiet looking out of the window.

We also went up Table Mountain, which was amazing. We went in a cable car up to the top. We were as high as the clouds. Sometimes the clouds come over Table Mountain and you can walk through the clouds.

We went to Newlands Cricket Ground as well, one of the biggest grounds in South Africa. We watched a 20Twenty Match. After the game we got to go on the pitch, it was a great experience.

Overall I had an amazing time and I will never forget it.