EC’s top two take on six other schools at nationals

Graeme and Grey vow to give it their best

SCHOOL cricketing action steps up a gear today as the Coca-Cola Schools T20 national finals gets under way at Tuks University in Pretoria.

Eight teams have qualified as champions of their various sections, six Franchise winners and two focus school champs, which should lead to some exciting battles.

The Eastern Cape for the second year running has two representatives, Warriors Franchise champions Grey High School and Coastal Focus School champs Graeme College.

Both sides find themselves in pool A alongside Lions victors King Edward VII School (KES) and Titans winners St Albans.

Grey are no strangers to the nationals and have been Warriors’ reps twice before, so they will go into their third edition knowing exactly what is needed to succeed at this level.

Their first match will be against St Albans on Tuks B field this morning, before they take on KES on Tuks C this afternoon.

Their final game of the pool stage will then be the Eastern Cape derby against Graeme, before the teams head into the knockout stages tomorrow.

For Graeme this is a completely knew experience as it will be their first ever appearance at the national finals.

They reached it by triumphing over Border Focus school champs Hudson Park and Western Cape Focus School champs Western Cape Sport School in a doubleheader at Fort Hare University last week Tuesday.

“We are very excited, a little bit surprised to a degree, to get through we had to get past that Hudson side which was a very strong side, so the guys are looking forward to it,” said Graeme coach and deputy headmaster Gregg van Molendorff.

The team will be looking to give a good account of themselves and won’t be overawed by the challenge that they face and will be looking to produce an upset or two along the way.

“It is going to be an amazing experience for us, we had a bit of a laugh looking at the ranking system where number one, number two, number three and number eight school teams in the country are all at the nationals while we are in 27th, so it is going to be exciting for the team to test themselves against the very best,” said Van Molendorff.

“We would like to almost emulate Hudson last year, a couple of surprises, upsets and shock results somewhere in there, it will be tough but in T20 cricket anything can happen so it should be quite fun.”

First up for Graeme will be KES on the Tuks main field this morning, which will be a huge opening test and should give the team a good indication of where they stand in the tournament.

“We were up in Pretoria last year for a camp and one of the days we went to the high performance centre which is right next door to the Tuks main field and there were a few comments on how we would like to play on that field and now the first game is against KES on that field which is quite a nice touch,” said Van Moldendorff.

The team then takes on St Albans this afternoon and will round off their group stage against local rivals Grey tomorrow morning.

“We just played them [Grey] a week ago and got a bit of a hiding, so we are looking for a bit of a rematch, we know what we are getting into against them and we will hopefully give them a good go,” said Van Moldendorff.