Over the last few months Trent Bridge has been searching far and wide in secondary schools across Nottinghamshire for the perfect picture of the Ashes. The Test Match Art Competition has been highly contested, particularly amongst pupils of East Leake Academy as all three winners have been found from the institute.

Winner, Ellie Sims, Aged 16

Ellie has just finished her GCSEs and wants to got into childcare and was a welcome surprise for her step-father when they discovered she had won as he is a huge fan of cricket and was over the moon to be able to be at the Ashes today. Ellie tells us about her artwork and what inspired her.

“Well I thought it would be quite a good idea to have both of the flags seeing as it’s both countries playing and then I had a symbol that represented cricket so I just thought about a cricket match and the stumps” she said.

“It took a couple of hours, around about 2 hours on the whole and over two days in my art lessons”

Any difficult sections?

“It was quite hard to get the Australia Flag and all the stars on them as they are quite difficult shapes but I learned quite a lot about tone and things like that and creative ideas from school” she replied.

Winner, Rebecca Harrigan, Aged 12

Rebecca is apparently forever in her room drawing according to Dad and the initial idea took only 20 minutes to put the brush onto the canvas before hours were spent putting in the color. She tells us a little about her winning picture.

“It’s cricket and it’s Ashes and the stumps were burnt so I thought I’d put flames on them to tell the story.” she said.

Any difficult sections?

“The Australian flag was tricky, I knew there was stars on but we didn’t know how many stars so I had to look that up. Of course I knew the England flag but adding details onto the lions was tricky but that was it really.”

Winner, Sophie Marsden, Aged 13

Sophie’s creation began in her the art class as she drew together the painting that would win her two tickets to the first day of the Ashes series but there was problems at times.

Any difficult sections?

“I found the writing quite hard, I had to practise it until I got it”

“The lettering being in the colours of Australia in green and yellow so I did that and for the England flag I didn’t know what other colours I could have used” she said.

Adam Roberts