Hampton twins Amy and Charlotte Wells made a vital contribution as Great Britain earned a creditable fifth spot in the European Cadette Softball Championships in Holland recently.

Bumped out of the top-tier play-offs after heavy defeats to Russia and the Netherlands, GB bounced back to see off Belgium and Slovakia to claim fifth, an improvement of two places on their 2007 showing.

And the 16-year-olds were happy with their overall display.

Amy said: “We are quite pleased to have finished in fifth, but we all still feel that we could have done better.

“We had a couple of really close games against Spain (lost 3-1) and the Czech Republic (lost 8-4) and if we had won those it could have been very different.”

Even so the Brits should be proud of their efforts, especially when considering the team had to evacuate their hotel at 4am on one gameday after a lightning strike set the premises on fire.

Incredibly, GB took to the field and saw off Belgium 12-6 that day, before staging a late rally to erase a 5-0 deficit and squeeze by Slovakia 6-5 in their final game.

Charlotte added: “The incident at the hotel was very scary as all the alarms were going off and nobody knew what was happening.

“We were all standing outside in the pouring rain and we ended up having to move hotels.

“In the morning everyone was really tired, but we dug in to beat Belgium.”

The twins will now move onto the under-19 age group, and Charlotte admits it was great to sign off in style.

She added: “The last time we entered we were a very young side but most of the girls were 15 or 16 this time and that made a big difference.

“The best bit was that Britain used to be a team that everyone thought they would beat, but we have changed all that.”