March 12th, 2013 -- Scotiabank and the West Indies Cricket Board will be staging the grand finals of the Scotiabank WICB Kiddy Cricket Festival Competition for the top eight Kiddy Cricket schools in St Kitts on May 10, 2013. The finals for the Kiddy Cricketers from Nevis will be played on May 3. The top 8 schools from each island will be playing for the Scotiabank WICB Championship trophy.
The Festival which is also being staged in eleven (11) other Caribbean territories offers Kiddy Cricketers from Kittian and Nevian Primary schools an opportunity to play a series of friendly interschool cricket matches which will culminate with a grand finals. The Scotiabank Kiddy Cricket Festival, allows the organizers to identify the most talented players and schools in the programme as well as allow the children to sharpen their skills by keeping them actively engaged in interschool games throughout the school year.
The preliminary round of the Festival kicked off on February 18, 2012 in St Kitts with 15 schools at the St. Paul’s Cricket Stadium, with a brief opening ceremony. The event was organized by Mr. Junie Mitcham, Leeward Islands Territorial Development Officer addressed the participants, Mr. Jeffery Hazel Acting Director of Sports and Mr. Charles Morton Kiddy Cricket Officer from Scotiabank.
After playing the preliminary games, the super eight teams which advanced to the finals were, St. Pauls and Dieppe Bay in Zone 2, Bronte Welsh and Tyrell Williams from Zone 3, Estridge and Joshua Obadiah William from zone 1 and Beach Allen and Tucker Clarke from Zone 4. Nevis which has a limited number of schools skipped the preliminary round and get a bye to the finals.
KJ Singh, Kiddy Cricket Officer at the West Indies Cricket Board explained that “the Festival was introduced as a developmental initiative by the WICB, to give the students additional opportunities to play the sport, expose them to further training from their coaches while increasing their active interest in the programme. While the games are not being run in a strictly speaking competitive format, the Festival will also allow coaches to identify students that are doing really well, and earmark them for more intense grooming and development work.
Scotiabank has lauded the Kiddy Cricket Festival in St Kitts as a key initiative in widening its support of youth cricket locally and a major development in he revamped Kiddy Cricket programme. Simone Hull, Regional Sponsorship Manager at Scotiabank said that “Over the past 13 years, we have seen several youngsters with immense potential rising to the professional leagues.
The Kiddy Cricket Festival allows even more talented players to shine as the games give them a chance to play the sport much more often and develop their technique. Even more significant to us is the fact that coaches will be able to see these players and introduce them to clinics and training programmes to propel them further. We want to see more Kiddy Cricketers representing their country and the region out there in the future.”
In addition to the Scotiabank/WICB Kiddy Cricket Festival Champions’ trophy, other sectional titles that are also up for grabs include the runner up school, best batter, best bowler, best fielder, parish champions, most disciplined team. All top eight schools playing at the Festival will also receive a parish trophy.
The Scotiabank Kiddy Cricket program was initiated in St.Kitts and Nevis in 2009 with four primary schools participating in the program, imparting foundation cricketing skills such as bowling, batting and fielding. The programme has now been expanded to 24 schools as at the start of the school year in January 2013.
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