Cape Town - The Calypso Cricket Festival had its 31st annual event at Sunrise Beach in Muizenberg.
The Sporting Chance programme gathered over 500 pupils to play cricket at the beach for the festival. The event, which is an adaptation of conventional cricket, aims at marketing and promoting the game of cricket, to get as many girls involved in the game, to bring different communities together and to possibly spot the next talent.
The programme is an ongoing pursuit that takes place at under-resourced schools in different townships and Cape Flats areas around the city.
The festival aims to prepare children with little or no idea of the sport to participate and enjoy with no gender discrimination.
Besides the children who took part in the game, the programme also involved community and primary school coaches so as to empower them and give them a platform to share their skills.
Westlake Primary School coach Wade Miller shared his love of working with kids and cricket as it taught him patience since it requires one side of the team to wait for the other.
“First, I like working with children. It has always been my passion, I like witnessing the development process between the age of eight to 13 from not being so good to being brilliant.
“Second, soccer is something that I was born with, but I fell in love with cricket as it taught me patience,” he said.
The children, boys and girls who were between the ages of eight and 13, were divided into two teams, 10 players each side in which some were either batting or bowling.
Among the schools represented was Elsen School for the disabled, which had 10 of its students among those who were playing accompanied by their two teachers.
Co-ordinator of the programme from the Ocean View region, Shirley Botes, highlighted her role in getting the children involved, visiting schools so as to engage and explain about the programme and mostly the part where they get to employ 20 unemployed parents of the children participating so as to close the child-parent gap.
“As a co-ordinator, I always look at kids who need this opportunity more than the other kids due to different circumstances and background. This year I also made a decision to involve the Elsen School of the Disabled, which has never taken part before,” she said.