Blessing Malinganiza
THE annual CABS St George’s College Smashing Cricket T20 Tournament returns tomorrow with 12 teams battling it out at the Harare institution.
Schools cricket powerhouses in the country have confirmed their participation for this year’s tourney which runs until Sunday.
Defending champions, Peterhouse Boys are set to join hosts, St George’s College and eight others – CBC, Churchill Boys, Falcon College, Hellenic Academy, Lomagundi College, Prince Edward, St John’s College and Wise Owl.
The tournament also maintains its regional flavour with South Africa’s Richard Bay Academy and Windhoek College from Namibia confirming their participation.
St George’s College First Team Head Coach and Tournament Director, Denford Kumundati, said they were ready to host the 18th edition of the tournament.
“It’s been months and months of hard work preparing for our flagship T20 cricket tournament and from the backend side of things we can say we are as ready as we can be,” Kumundati said.
“We are glad to have received a generous amount of sponsorship from out title sponsor, CABS.
“They pledged to be with us for the long haul, this is a Test cricket kind of relationship in an exciting fast and furious shorter version of the game.
“So, when you have such kind of support you wouldn’t want to leave anything to chance, you would always want to ensure that you are more than prepared a month before the games.”
Peterhouse Boys powered past South Africa’s St Andrew’s in last year’s final winning a Super Over after the scores had tied.
But the South African side will not be a part of this year’s proceedings, confirmed CABS St George’s College Smashing Cricket T20 Festival Chairman, Daniel Myers.
“Unfortunately, because of the election year, our tournament usually happens end of August or early September, we were advised to hold our tournament a week before election and then the South African teams had already made commitments and they couldn’t meet the dates in mid-August,” said Myers.
“They would have loved to come end of August, so we lost three schools from South Africa who had committed to come because of change of dates because of the election.”