JOHANNESBURG – It is that time of the year when the respective youth cricketers start having their tournaments taking place over the December holidays.
The cricket season is in full swing with the spotlight on school cricket when numerous Youth Cricket weeks taking place over the next few weeks. These weeks run under the auspices of Cricket South Africa from u.13 to u.19.
Coca Cola has been a major supporter of Youth cricket in South Africa and has once again announced at a Press Conference on Monday November 25 that it will sponsor the Khaya Majola u.19 Week which has run for the past 30 years.
This year’s Coca-Cola Khaya Majola Week will be played in Durban from December 16 to 21.
More recently, the beverage giant committed to partnering with another great initiative, the Coca-Cola Schools T20 challenge which sees almost 700 schools compete nationally in a knock-out tournament to see who will represent the six franchises. The winner is then crowned national champions.
The Coca-Cola Khaya Majola Week is the flagship Youth week and plays a major role in the selection of the South Africa u.19 squad that will go to next year’s ICC u.19 World Cup. The culmination of the week is also the announcement of the prestigious South African Schools team.
“The world famous Coca-Cola brand has become synonymous with Youth cricket in South Africa,” said Corrie van Zyl, CSA Manager: Cricket. “It stands both for quality of cricket through the Coca-Cola Khaya Majola u.19 Week, the South African Schools XI and the South African u.19 squad and for quality of opportunity through the Coca-Cola Schools T20 Challenge.”
“The quality of the former speaks for itself if you consider that the vast majority of our current Proteas represented their provinces at this week. The T20 Challenge is the fastest growing competition across all sporting codes in South Africa and is playing a major role in fulfilling CSA’s vision of making cricket a truly national sport and South Africa a nation of winners.”
“As sponsors of the Coca-Cola Khaya Majola Week and the Coca-Cola T20 Schools Challenge, we believe these programmes are where heroes are made,” said Fetsi Mbele, Coca-Cola IMC – Marketing Assets Manager. “All but a handful of the current crop of heroes doing battle with Pakistan played in the Coca-Cola Khaya Majola Week. In addition, the first of the Coca-Cola T20 Schools Challenge graduates – Quinton de Kock – is already making a name for himself on the international stage.
“The Coca-Cola T20 Schools Challenge is a relatively new competition, but we believe it is already changing the schools cricket landscape. It also endeavours to promote cricket in more and more schools in our communities as we strive to include more previously disadvantaged schools each year in the programme.”
Coca-Cola has also come up with an exciting new initiative this season called the Coca-Cola 30 Minutes Heroes Challenge.
The aim of the programme is to promote Active healthy living and get more kids moving through a fun competition. Participating schools are challenged to get as many kids through a 5-drill course as possible in a 30 minute time period.
The school with the most teens successfully completing the course in the allocated time will receive an outdoor gym to the value of R200 000. Seventeen schools have already completed the course and it will continue in 2014.
