North West Cricket visited Potchefstroom High School for Boys to hand over cricket equipment and a pitch cutting machine as part of the Cricket South Africa (CSA) Focus School initiative.

The school went through an application process during the latter part of the 2017/18 school cricket season and CSA awarded it the status of being a Focus School, through the use of the Schools Quality Index (SQI). The SQI tool measures the standard of a school’s cricket service programme from its facilities, coaches, league participation, player/coach ratio and representativity in the teams.

The school received an amount of R 50 000 towards improving their cricket services programme. With the assistance of North West Cricket (NWC), it decided to purchase the cutter, two coaching bags for their coaching staff, 24 bowling machine balls, two Katchet boards and 48 cricket balls for the upcoming school cricket season.

Two of the school’s coaches will attend a CSA level 2 Coaching Course at Senwes Park in July as part of the Coaches Education programme. Potchefstroom Boys’ High has a total 460 learners enrolled at the school and five teams participating in the NW High School Leagues (two u.19 teams and three junior teams). It participates mainly in the NW Super B leagues for u.19s and u.15s.

‘As Potchefstroom High School for Boys, we want to thank Cricket South Africa and North West Cricket for this fantastic gesture of improving the cricket services programme at our school. We have the facilities, coaches and learners to ensure our cricket programme moves closer towards becoming a blue-chip school in the NW Province. This funding ensures that there’s further cricket development for the school and the province,’ said Mr John Swanepoel, the deputy principal at PBHS.

Potchefstroom High School for Boys has produced numerous players who have gone on to play for various NW provincial age groups at CSA National Cricket Weeks, semi-pro level, franchise level and even national level. Among them are the likes of Julian Soutter (NW Dragons), Johannes Diseko (NW Dragons, former VKB Knight player), Vusimuzi Mazibuko (former NW Dragons and Bizhub Highveld Lions player) and Eddie Leie (former Gauteng Strikers and Bizhub Highveld Lions, Proteas, current VKB Knights player).

‘This CSA means a lot for our school and we aim to revive our school cricket culture through the funding from CSA and NWC,’ said Mr Alec Conradie, the cricket master.

‘It is a great privilege for CSA to recognise one of our schools as a focus school. This is a step in the right direction in terms of reviving the standard of cricket at Potchefstroom High School for Boys.

This school is one of our partners when it comes to providing cricket services to our stakeholders and, with this CSA initiative, we can certainly get close to achieving our goal of providing quality cricket at school level and when we host CSA National Cricket Weeks. Thank you to CSA for supporting school cricket,’ said Vincent Prior, the CEO of North West Cricket.