The Sunday News
Brandon Moyo, Sports Reporter
IT has been a thrilling day of cricket at the Old Mutual Academy of Cricket Excellence (former Heath Streak Academy) as 16 schools took part in the final day of the Old Mutual Colts Cricket Cup and the CABS Under-13 Cricket Cup.
The tournament has been a good development event with most schools coming from the Western Suburbs. Ongoing, is the Under-13s final pitting Mtshingwe Primary School and Old Mutual Academy select team. The former were batting first.
“Today we are having the Old Mutual Colts Cricket League and we also introduced a new brand called the CABS Under-13 Cricket Cup, CABS and Old Mutual are partners from inception, they are the backbone of the academy and we are honoured by an association with such a big corporate supporting these two major flagship tournaments.
“This tournament is basically for most schools coming from the Western Suburbs, we have 16 schools and 32 teams here with us today and the tournament has been going on for the last week and has been efficiently run by the manager of cricketer,” said Old Mutual Academy of Cricket Excellence Trust President and Board Chairman Joseph Rego.
CABS Managing Director, Mehluli Mpofu said such a tournament is crucial to the growth of cricket in the country and its important to them as an organisation. He added that they will continue supporting the growth of cricket in the country and other sports.
“Its been a decade of supporting cricket. In this case, we are supporting the young, so its very developmental which obviously supports the growth of cricket in the country and particularly when you deal with disadvantaged people and give them an opportunity to actually grow in the sport, it becomes very important to us as a business because ultimately what we always say to ourselves is we ought to be supportive of the community that we operate in and that is one way of doing so.
“Its important that we resume and as you can see here, there is lots of support from the schools, there are 16 schools with 32 teams and its important we give them a lot of support, cover as best as we can and the commitment that we are giving as CABS and Old Mutual Group is that we will continue to support cricket and we will continue to look for other opportunities top support grassroots cricket and in other sports we need to look at how we can play a part as well,” said Mpofu.
It is not just a cricket day but also a “Spring Fare and Fun Day” featuring over 150 stalls, jumping castles and water slides for children, face painting, balloon making and many other activities for children and families is taking place at the city’s ceremonial home of cricket development. – @brandon_malvin
