The winners will represent South Africa at the 2016 Red Bull Campus Cricket World Finals. Winners of the inaugural competition, University of Pretoria (UP-Tuks), successfully defended their Red Bull Campus title in India last year and will look to make it three in a row in 2016.
“We’re looking forward to witnessing some of South Africa’s most talented cricketers take to the Potchefstroom stage,” says Jana Arlow, Varsity Sports code manager for Cricket.
“The opportunity for these young players to showcase and develop their talent wouldn’t be possible without the generous support of sponsors such as Samsung, Steers, Edgars Active and FNB.”
The eight teams battling it out for top honours in Potchefstroom next week will be current champions UP-Tuks and challengers NWU-Pukke, Maties, UCT, UJ, Kovsies, NMMU and UWC.
There will be 31 hard-hitting, high tempo T20 matches hosted by three venues: the Puk Oval, the Ibbies Oval and Senwes Park. These matches will be played in a round robin format and the teams finishing in the top four will contest the semifinals, with the final taking place on Saturday 30 January. In addition to the final, the curtain-raiser will be a T20 match between local Potchefstroom schools, Volkies and Gimmies.
“This tournament could well become an important component in our talent development pipeline as we noted early success from last year’s edition with a number of players making a successful transition to professional Franchise cricket,” says CSA Chief Executive, Haroon Lorgat.
“It is evident that this tournament offers a new platform to unearth young and exciting talent and it is also evident that new fans are being added to the game. It’s important for us to grow our fan base and we are pleased that Varsity Cricket offers a great opportunity to do so.”
The popular pink cricket balls as well as many of the innovative rules that spectators and players have enjoyed will return in 2016. In a slight rule change to the Power Play Plus Over, whereby the batting team can select to have all runs and extras scored in an over doubled, the fielding team will now be allowed to select which bowler will take on the batsmen.
In 2015, the fielding team could not change the bowler once the batting side had signalled that they would initiate their Power Play Plus Over. Should a batsmen lose their wicket during the Power Play Plus Over, five runs will be deducted from the batting side’s score.
Cricket fans can also look forward to viewing a number of televised matches, which will be broadcast live on SuperSport. These include both semifinals and the final.
Source: African News Agency (ANA)
