DEFENDING champions the University of Pretoria will face stern competition from their rivals when the T20 cricket tournament, Varsity Cricket, starts.
The second edition will start in earnest on Monday, January 25, in Potchefstroom hosting a thrilling six-day tournament, where South Africa’s top universities will compete for the ultimate title in university cricket.
The winners will represent South Africa at the 2016 Red Bull Campus Cricket World Finals. Winners of the inaugural competition, University of Pretoria (UP-Tuks), successfully defended their Red Bull Campus title in India last year and will look to make it three in a row.
“This year we have a few young players coming into the team, so our team is a good mix of some of the experienced players that won the trophies together with the young ones,” said captain of UP-Tuks team, Murray Coetzee.
“We know that we will be up against some of the strong teams in the competition, but if we prepare well the title is there for anyone to win, but we will do our best to defend the title once more.”
The eight teams battling it out for top honours in Potchefstroom next week will be current champions UP-Tuks and challengers North West University (Pukke), Stellenbosch University (Maties), University of Cape Town (UCT), University of Johannesburg (UJ), University of the Free State (Kovsies), Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) and University of the Western Cape (UWC).
There will be 31 hard-hitting, high tempo T20 matches hosted at three venues: the Puk Oval, the Ibbies Oval and Senwes Park. These matches will be played in a round robin format and the teams finishing in the top four will contest the semi-finals, with the final taking place on Saturday, January 30. In addition to the final, the curtain-raiser will be a T20 match between local Potchefstroom schools, Volkies and Gimmies.
The popular pink cricket balls as well as many of the innovative rules that spectators and players have enjoyed will return in 2016. In a slight rule change to the Power Play Plus Over, whereby the batting team can select to have all runs and extras scored in an over doubled, the fielding team will now be allowed to select which bowler will take on the batsmen.
In 2015, the fielding team could not change the bowler once the batting side had signalled that they would initiate their Power Play Plus Over. Should a batsman lose their wicket during the Power Play Plus Over, five runs will be deducted from the batting side’s score.
For all the fixtures and news from Varsity Cricket, go to www.varsitysportssa.com
