HARROW St Mary's won the regional final of the Under-13 National Club championship on Tuesday.

In the semi-final they beat Farnham and in the final they narrowly defeated Sparsholt by one wicket.

They progressed to the regional finals after beating local rivals Wembley earlier this month.

They will now represent the south and south east region in the prestigious national finals in Rutland in August.

Harrow St Mary's is one of more than 1,600 teams from 38 counties plus Scotland and the Isle of Wight, which entered this year's competition.

This late stage of the tournament is familiar to the team, who made it to the national finals last year.

This is the fourth year that the championship is running with MCC support.

"The standard of this competition gets better year on year and it is encouraging to see so many talented cricketers coming through the system," said John Stephenson, the former Essex and England all-rounder and now MCC's head of cricket.

With this in mind the Harrow team will have to push themselves to the highest possible level of cricket in order to succeed in the later stages of the competition.

The finals take place over four days of competition, August 8-11. Each of the eight regional finalists will play each other over 20 overs a side in a "round-robin" format. If two teams are tied on points at the end of the tournament, runs scored and wickets taken will be taken into account.

The winning team is announced on the final day and will be presented with the Ken Barrington trophy. Team spirit and courtesy will also be rewarded; in keeping with the tournament sponsorship, the team that displays the best on-pitch attitude will receive an MCC Spirit of Cricket award.