Jamboree’s joyous hit
Mavericks U12s triumph at Stirling Primary T5 swinging cricket festival
ASUCCESSFUL twodays of junior cricketing action was enjoyed by all at the T5 cricket festival, hosted by the Stirling Cricket Academy at Stirling Primary School last week.
The action took place on Thursday and Friday and saw 126 kids in school and mixed teams taking part in the event sponsored by Work Africa and Jumbo Clothing.
“The festival was extremely successful, we had more than double the entries and we raised the awareness of this event as the premier cricket showpiece in this region for these age group boys,” event organiser, Mark Rogers said.
“Looking at the results, we have some very talented young cricketers.”
This festival, in its second year running, caters for players not old enough to make the Border age group teams yet.
Late on Friday afternoon three finals were battled out.
This saw the Mavericks from Stirling triumph in the U12 Premier League division, picking up the Jumbo Clothing Cup, while the Wildcats from Lilyfontein ended as runners-up and the Greyhounds from Selborne finished third.
In the U10 Premier League division, the Dragons also from Stirling finished top, earning themselves the Work Africa Cup, defeating the challenge of the Lynxes from Lilyfontein, who took second place, while the Rebels from Hudson rounded out the top three.
The last division – the U10 Academy League – saw the Giants team from Selborne place first ahead of the runners-up Gladiators.
“The teams were worthy winners but they were not runaway winners, as there were other teams that ran them very close,” said Rogers.
“I feel the best part of the tournament was how much fun these boys had and that everybody was able to go away with cricket shirts and prize packs.”
Individual honours were then also awarded on the day.
Caleb Schwagele from the Rockets team was named U12 bowler of the festival and Hayden McKay of the Kings U12, batsman of the festival, ahead of Lumile Tshona and Aya Jakatyana, both from the Rockets, were placed runners-up respectively.
On the U10 front, Liso Ndzamela of the Gladiators and Chad Henderson of the Lynxes picked up the top bowler and batsman awards respectively with Liam Poole from the Tornados and Chad Clark-Evans from the Dragons ending as the two runners-up.
After the festival a Colts XI side was selected in both the U10 and U12 divisions, with both teams set to play a Stirling Invitation XI in January next year.
After that the organisers will look on to the next festival to be held at the end of the year once again.
“We are definitely looking to improve our scoring system next year, making it live, plus we want to involve Border Cricket Development programme more and the schools that were not involved this year,” said Rogers.
“We will need to cap entries though to keep the quality of the event high and we would also like to get a top out-of-town team to play our Colts next time.”