Leading Indian school visit Pretoria on cricket tour
A cricket team from one of India's elite schools visited Pretoria recently during their tour to South Africa to play matches against two local teams.
One of the best cricket schools in India visited Pretoria recently during a two-week tour of South Africa.
The Scindia School, located in the northern regions of India near New Dehli, is 120 years old.
With the foundation of the school in 1897, it was originally intended to be a school exclusively for the sons of Indian princes and nobles.
The school is considered to be one of the best English-medium boarding schools in India.
Among its excellent sports facilities counts cricket amenities that meet the standards required of international first-class cricket matches.
Gauteng was first on the Scindia School’s touring plan. They played three matches in Pretoria and Johannesburg before leaving for Kwazulu-Natal for a few matches there.
Locally they played against the Excellentiam Cricket Academy, which is based in Centurion, as well as a team from Hoërskool Wonderboom.
These matches were played at Aloe Park, the cricket pitch at the sports grounds of the national police college in Pretoria.
The tour team lost both these friendly matches.
The management of the team was particularly impressed with the standard of the cricket by the local schoolboys.
The tour was organised by Jeetendra Pandey, who had lived in South Africa for a few years and played club cricket in Durban.
Naman Sarawat, director of sport at the school who toured with the team in South Africa, told the media that the opportunity to be exposed to a foreign culture and to play on South African cricket pitches meant a lot for the development of the schoolboys on tour.
He also said that the boys had a hero worship for South African star players in the Indian Premier League.
They especially considered it a privilege to be able to play in Pretoria, the city of AB de Villiers. According to Sarawat, this recently retired Proteas star batsman was a mega-star in India.
Many of the boys on tour, like their counterparts in India, regarded him with great hero worship.
Pandey told Rekord that the success of the tour created new opportunities to bring more teams from India to South Africa.
In this way, more junior players from both countries would get exposure to the different styles of cricket played in the two countries at an early age.
For free breaking and community news, visit Rekord’s websites:
For more news and interesting articles, like Rekord on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or Instagram.
