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Sports Correspondent
THE Stanbic Stragglers Junior Cricket Week ended yesterday with over 300 budding junior cricketers aged between 9 and 12 participating in one of the country’s prime junior cricket development programmes. Stragglers Cricket Week kicked off on Monday 22 August at Hartmann House and St. George’s College and saw teams from cricket development areas such as Mabvuku, Highfield, Glen View, Shamva, Bindura and Chitungwiza participating alongside children from various other schools.

Zimbabwe captain Graeme Cremer attended the event to inspire the younger cricket generation. Cremer applauded Stanbic Bank Zimbabwe and Stragglers organisers for playing a big part in nurturing the talent of “the future of Zimbabwe cricket”.

“Stragglers Junior Cricket is the best way to identify and nurture talent. This has demonstrated that there is high level of interest in cricket and the numbers of participants speak for themselves.

“I must say hats off to Stanbic Bank who have been excellent once again and we need more big corporates to come on board. “The gesture by Stanbic Bank is all the more commendable when one looks at the prevailing economic challenges,” said Cremer adding that Zimbabwe is endowed with exceptional cricket talent.

Stragglers Junior cricket week affords children from all over the country an opportunity to play during the holidays and have some fine tuning of their skills through coaching.

Tournament organiser Win Ives said the junior cricket week has played a big part in feeding the country’s national teams with some players in the current U16s and U19steams having participated at the annual junior cricket development event.

The week-long event sawgrade 4 and 5 cricketers playing in the morning and the grade 6 and 7s in the afternoon. The junior cricket development event is held once a year during the August School holidays and brings together children from different backgrounds for a week of cricket coaching.

The players are placed into teams named after cricketing countries – Zimbabwe, West Indies, India, England, Australia, and Sri Lanka to name a few. Each country challenges a different country every day during the week in limited overs matches.

All cricketers are rotated and every player has a chance to bat and bowl. Certificates are awarded to high achieving cricketers.