One of the rising stars of cricket is shining brightly this week as a young Kendal's Tom Aspinwall played a major part in the England Under-19 team securing their place in the World Cup Final in the Caribbean.

Aspinwall, of Kendal Cricket Club and Lancashire Academy, has been a prominent figure throughout the tournament but played perhaps his biggest role yet as England beat Afghanistan by 15 runs.

England had comfortably beaten reigning U-19 World Champions Bangladesh in their first group game, and then followed up that major victory with convincing wins against Canada and the United Arab Emirates, before swatting aside South Africa in the quarter-final.

In a rain affected semi-final reduced to 47 overs each side England posted 231-6 off 47 overs. Opening batter George Thomas scored 50 before England were reduced to 120-5 when the rain came down, after the resumption in play George Bell 56 (not out) and Alex Horton 53 (not out) shared a 7th wicket stand of 95 to take England to 231-6 at the end of their allotted overs.

After losing their first wicket in the opening over to Lancashire's left arm seamer Josh Boyden the Afghan pair of Shirzad and Noor took the score on to 94 before Kendal's Tom Aspinwall combined with wicket-keeper Horton to run out Shirzad.

In the following over Aspinwall claimed the wicket of Afghan skipper Suliman Safi, who was caught at mid-wicket by Jacob Bethell.

Four overs later Aspinwall claimed his second wicket by tempting the dangerous Allah Noor into an ill-judged shot to be caught at mid-off by James Sales to leave the score at 106-4 - Aspinwall involved in 3 wickets to fall for only 12 runs.

From there the game ebbed and flowed in both sides' favour until Leicestershire's leg spinner claimed 3 wickets in the penultimate over to rock the Afghan reply with Boyden restricting the batsmen to only 2 runs from the final over as England claimed the victory by 15 runs.

England will now meet either India or Australia in Saturday's final.

"Taspy" will have his Kendal team mates and supporters cheering him on from Kendal's Shap Road clubhouse with the match being shown live from 1pm.