T20 Cricket league kicks off

By Mbekezeli Ncube

The fourth edition of the Spar Bonsa Cricket League is set to kick off on 27 July and ending on 1 September with the battle ground being the Old Mutual Heath Streak Academy stadium.

Six teams will battle for the championship and these include Badgers who are sponsored by Fastjet, Fazak funded Raptors, Canela's Sabres, Hawks who are sponsored by Pepsi, National fencing as well as last year's champions Pool Blazers who are sponsored by Mermaid.

The tournament's Head of Marketing and Public Relations, Arthur Evans said this year's edition is going to be bigger and better as the league is still growing.

'What is exciting about this year's tournament is that in as much as it is a competitive tournament, it still has a very developmental focus. There are six icon players that will be involved in the games and they will be split between the franchises that are there, each team will have an icon player that will compete for them' Evans said.

'The beauty of this is that there will be national players in each and every franchise and the franchises are owned by companies from the corporate world in Zimbabwe. It is developmental because each team will consist of first league players, second league players and it also has a compulsory mandate that every team must have an under 19 player in it,' Evans added.

Over 200 players applied to be part of the tournament and the selection process is open to any professional or semi professional cricket player across the country.

Tournament organisers are also looking forward to improving the prize money and there will also be individual prizes after every match like the man of the match, player of the tournament, best bowler and the best batsman.

'Our sponsors want to give back to the winning team as much as possible, because of the economic challenges there has been some hesitancy to commit because our sponsorship packages were reduced,' Evans said.

This tournament comes not so long after there has been a lot of negative talk in the press about Zimbabwe cricket and Evans encouraged Zimbabweans to support the sport.

'Zimbabwe cricket is alive and well, everybody that is part of the tournament supports Zimbabwe cricket and they believe in the quality of the talent that is in the country. One of the things that we really making a call to is for people to follow the tournament via social media and come and watch the games at the former MacDonald's sports club,' Evans added.

_nextlevelsportstv