LANCASHIRE Youth Games -- Girls and disability cricket competitions.

PRACTICE made perfect for Hyndburn's Moderate Learning Difficulty side who won gold with a tremendous team performance.

Made up of players from Broadfield School is Oswaldtwistle and North Cliffe in Great Harwood, Hyndburn beat off the challenge of Preston to win their medals.

Played the best of 10 overs with no player being able to bowl more than two overs each, Hyndburn showed great skill with both the bat and ball.

And while it was a fine all-round performance, captain Kadeer Azad led by example and turned in a match-winning performance to claim five wickets against a very good Preston side.

Coach Jeff Wynne said: "My love of cricket has certainly rubbed off on these players and they thoroughly deserve their win because they have worked hard for it.

"They all played very well but Kadeer Azad's bowling performance was exceptional."

The majority of the team were made up of pupils from Broadfield School with the exception of North Cliffe's Ben Cardwell who is the captain of the Lancashire MDL side.

The team included Anthony Buck, Andrew Burton, Efras Hussain, David Glasgow, Scott Griffiths, Kasid Tafile, Amar Khan and Charlene George.

While the Moderate Learning Difficulties event only attracted two teams, Hyndburn showed that all their hours training did the trick.

Both Broadfield and North Cliffe are schools committed to cricket.

In the SLD competition, there was no separating Lancaster and Preston who tied for first place.

While Hyndburn enjoyed that winning feeling, the hastily assembled Rossendale side failed to pick up single victory in the girls cricket competition -- but improved as the tournament went on.

The team was made up of year five and year six players competing against sides who were largely year seven players.

Coach Tom Farrell said: "We did not have much time to get the team together so much so that some of the girls met each other for the first time on the coach on the way to the tournament."

However, they showed how much they improved as the tournament progressed when openers Kirsty O'Brien of Balladen and Deborah Copeland of Stone Fold batted throughout against a very strong Pendle and narrowly avoided defeat. Pendle went on to finish in second place ahead of Hyndburn.

The Rossendale team also included Laura Paul, Stevie Davis and Fern Brislin of Haslingden County Primary School, Cloughfold trio Rebecca Berry, Anna Thomasson and Jennifer Bleakley and Simone Parr of Newchurch.