Otago Country T20 Youth SLAM

6/11/2019

A new youth cricket competition, T20 Youth Slam, was launched in Central Otago last Friday night with six youth age teams (years 9,10 and 11) competing in the first of two T20 tournaments that will be held this season.

Why the change to Friday night cricket?
Junior cricket in Central Otago is very healthy with good playing number across all clubs. However, when boys and girls move to secondary school there has been a large drop off in playing numbers. Last season saw only four team competing in an organised Saturday competition so teams ended up playing the same guys each weekend which made it a bit stale. The change to Friday night is designed to free up the weekends for players but also provide opportunities for talented and committed players to play in other competitions (e.g. school teams in reserve grade on Saturdays). Potentially this will enable schools to strengthen a team in the Senior Reserve competition by adding Year 10/11s.

The change is already paying dividends with renewed interest in the competition and the introduction of two new teams, Cromwell and an all girls team from Dunstan High School.

Several other changes such as the use of CricHQ for scoring, marketing the competition on Instagram and the use of white/pink balls has also created more interests and excitement for players.

Kohen Bryant-Saunders (63 off 25 balls) and Mika Tait (54 off 33 balls) scored well in the first round of the Youth Slam on Friday night. Well done boys Maz Cameron from the Dunstan Devils was the other player to pass 50 (56* v Queenstown)

Kohen Bryant-Saunders hits one of his 13 boundaries in a well compiled 63 v Cromwell Miners.