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Michael Magoronga Midlands Correspondent
About 320 pupils drawn from eight schools in the Midlands Province benefited from Cricket for Good programme, which ran concurrently with the International Cricket Council World Cup Qualifiers that were hosted by Zimbabwe and ended on Friday last  week.

The primary school pupils, who were drawn from Kwekwe, Gweru, Gokwe and Zvishavane primary schools, had an opportunity to get life skills and training from some renowned international cricket players under the programme.

Players from Hong Kong, Nepal, United Arab Emirates, Netherlands and Ireland that participated in the qualifiers, had a chance to interact and impart some life skills on the pupils just before training at Kwekwe Sports Club.

Midlands Cricket administrator Mr Admire Marodza said the programme was successful.

“We received training equipment from Cricket Zimbabwe like bats, stumps and balls that we used for the programme and am happy that the programme went on well,” he said.

Mr Marodza said turn-up was overwhelming.

“We made sure the programme benefited everyone, including the girl child, he said. So, we had 20 boys and 20 girls per school. We had eight schools, including Gokwe Cheziya High, a rural  school.”

Mr Marodza said the intention going forward was to spread the sport to the rural areas where it was yet to fully penetrate.

“Going forward, we want the rural schools to benefit from our junior league that is dominated by mostly urban schools, so the coming in of Cheziya is a good start for us, he said.

We hope that we will use the equipment that we received to spread the sport to the rural areas.”

The Cricket for Good was created as the ICC Global Community’s outreach programme aimed at leveraging the enormous power and reach out of cricket to positively impart the lives of children and families worldwide.