Muhammad Sa’d Laher, a Pioneer Primary School learner, wants to don the green and gold and stroll to the crease like his idol, retired Proteas batsman, Hashim Amla.
His schoolmate, Banele Shaku said the recent ICC U19 Women’s World Cup at Willowmoore Park inspired her to pursue the game she loves, which is why she’s thankful to the mini-cricket programme for making it possible.
Seen rubbing the ball on their trunks and with a bat in hand, Shaku and Sa’d Laher were part of the group of learners from Wattville and Actonville at the KFC Mini-Cricket Community Festival at Lords Cricket Ground in Actonville on March 2.
Part of mini-cricket’s 40th celebrations and named thus to capitalise on the euphoria of the recent women’s world cups, the festival aims to boost the feeder pipeline for Eastern Cricket Union.
“We use mini-cricket as a feeder platform for schools cricket, which then feeds into our club structures.
“From club cricket, these players then become eligible to represent our Easterns provincial team,” said Eastern Cricket Union mini-cricket coordinator Julius Maziya.
Maziya added the community festival would ensure more township learners play competitive cricket regularly.
“We’ve got regional fixtures for schools in Wattville that happen throughout the year to ensure the children are active in the sport.
With this, there is an aim to get more people involved in the townships, so that the change from mini to hardball cricket is simpler.”
Cricket South Africa (CSA) mass participation coordinator Buhle Vaphi pointed out that mini-cricket doesn’t only focus on unearthing future cricketers. It also emphasises grooming upcoming administrators, coaches and umpires.
“The whole point of mini-cricket is to instil the love of the game.
“Unfortunately, not all the children in the programme are going to make it professionally either for Easterns or Proteas. But the love of the game is going to be there. These are the same children who will impact their communities positively.
“Our obligation is to increase the CSA pipeline and these are future administrators, umpires, scorers and fans that will be filling up the stadiums,” said Vaphi.
Vaphi stated it was encouraging to see how the recent women’s world cups in January and February have inspired more girls to participate in the sport.
According to Vaphi CSA has over 136 000 children in the programme and 40 000 of those are girls.
“For me, that says the future of women’s cricket and cricket in South Africa is bright.
“It’s also interesting that today we’ve got girls playing against each other and not in mixed teams. It shows that the programme is feeding into the CSA pipeline.”
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