Willows cricketers branch out to international arenas
The Willows club will again continue to extend their branches around the cricket world in the coming weeks.
The club which fosters the game for youth, in the South Island especially, with Sunday fixtures at their impressive home ground in Loburn, North Canterbury have a squad of 13 schoolboys travelling to Sri Lanka and two players heading to England soon on a scholarship.
Former New Zealand and Canterbury player Paul McEwan manages the Willows seventh tour to the sub-continent in April where two matches apiece will be played in Colombo, Kandy and Galle, the last named games at Galle International Stadium.
McEwan will be accompanied by Nelson College and former Canterbury coach Garry MacDonald and Canterbury Cricket playercoach Keryn Ambler.
The visit ties in well with the sterling work of Cricket Live Foundation founder Alex Reese, 24, from Christchurch who has established three academies in the slum areas of Colombo for cricketmad youngsters catering for over 400 cricketers under 12. The club has been strongly supportive of Reese’s work.
The Willows first tour overseas was in 2008 to an MCC tournament in Chandigarh in northern India followed by two matches in Muscat and Oman and another two games at Sharjah.
The two players bound for a six months scholarship to Matfern in Northumberland, northern England from April 1 are William O’Brien (Burnside HS) and Alex Tait (Southland BHS). They are the 29th and 30th recipients of the award to stay at the property of Sir Hugh Blackett.
Cricket is not the Willows only sporting outlet with the club having an involvement with the Salvation Army in an interdenominational sports service at the new Citadel on the corner of Colombo and Salisbury Sts.
This is being staged on June 11, the day after the Crusaders match with the British and Irish Lions at AMI Stadium. Former All Black Keven Mealamu, now a youth worker in Auckland, will be a guest speaker while the St Margaret’s Girls Choir and Medbury Prepatory Choir will assist the Salvation Army Songsters and the Salvation Army Brass Band.