Six Benonians recently returned from competing for the South African u-17 boys’ team at the Indoor Cricket Junior World Series 2018 in New Zealand.
After months of training, the u-17 South African side, which comprised of six Benoni boys from the Eastern Gauteng Action Cricket squads, was selected.
Rourke van Zyl (17), first team cricket captain at St Dunstan’s College, was selected as the captain of the World Cup squad.
His fellow teammates from Benoni were Joshua Taylor, Sheldon Watt, Kian Schwartz, William Harrison and Enrico Potgieter.
Their tournament included double round-robin matches against New Zealand, New Zealand A, Australia, Singapore and England.
A total of 10 games were played in a round-robin format, ending in the first play-off match, where the South African boys held their heads high, beating New Zealand A 135-103.
The semi-final was a nail-biter against one of the favourites, Australia, with the Australians needing two runs off the last ball to go to the gold final, but the South African boys were not about to give up and managed a very exciting run out to win the game by seven runs, 92-85.
The SA boys had a chance of being the World Cup champions in a close final, but the scales tipped in New Zealand’s favour in the second last over.
Two amazing one-handed catches by the New Zealand backstop gave them the edge in the last over to beat South Africa by 100-74.
The New Zealand and South African teams were the only two teams to have successfully beaten all other participating nations in the round-robin.
The u-13, u-15 and u-17 teams arrived home to a warm welcome at OR Tambo International Airport. The u-13 side brought back gold while the u-15 and u-17 sides brought home silver medals, some of the best junior results from South African junior indoor cricket teams in years.
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