by GIFT NDOLWANE
JOHANNESBURG – STANDARD Bank and Cricket South Africa (CSA) have partnered to transform the national sport by developing and nurturing the budding cricket potential in the country.

The partnership sees the financial institution sponsoring 12 Regional Performance Centres (RPC) programmes across the country, with the ultimate objective of growing the pipeline of future stars.

The RPC programme focuses on youngsters aged between 13 and 18.

Ongoing until Friday, it will afford some 144 young, talented cricketers from around the country an opportunity to participate in the Standard Bank RPC National U17 Week for 2018.

This junior tournament will take place in Pretoria in areas that include Hammanskraal, Mamelodi and Tuks.

“As Standard Bank, we entered into this partnership with CSA as the sponsor of the RPC Programme, so that we could play a vital role in developing the immense cricketing talent in SA by providing the necessary support at grassroots level,” said Jenny Lyn Pheiffer, Standard Bank Group Executive Head of Group Brand and Sponsorship.

Corrie van Zyl, CSA’s General Manager: Cricket, said the Standard Bank RPC U17 week was a great platform for the youngsters to put into practice all the learnings from when they started the plug-in.

In 2015, the RPCs managed to produce 98 players to the various provincial teams going to the national boys’ and girls’ youth tournaments in December 2017, which saw a slight increase to 112.

There has been an explosion of talent coming through this year and the number of players selected for the youth tournaments has rocketed to 217.

“The development of these young identified cricket players is paramount to the success of the CSA player pathway and the Standard Bank RPC U17 week offers the players the opportunity to showcase their talent,” Van Zyl said.
– Guardian