DANIËL BASSON
The residence cricket season is in full swing and speedily approaching its end. The res cricket league is very competitive but it also provides the opportunity for cricket enthusiasts to play the game seriously without being tied down with training every day of the week. Matches often go down to the wire and there are plenty of displays of talent from the players.
Matches are currently played on Mondays and Wednesdays with the first ball bowled around midday. Teams, however, have bee finding it difficult to put an eleven-man squad together. So far this has led to a lot of matches being abandoned. The competitiveness of matches is lost as star performers from the one side are absent, resulting in runaway victories for the opposition. Sport HK members from various residences have complained to TuksRes cricket in an attempt to have game times rescheduled so that they don’t clash with class times.
“The organisation of the tournament could be better in terms of having umpires and being able to play on weekends because this weekday fixture thing at 14:00 forces [players] to miss lectures. The practise times for nets at Tuks is ridiculous (from 12:00 to 14:00) and it is unlikely that teams can make those slots so it’s a bit unfair. We also haven’t trained once all season,” says Tshepo Mokoena, sport EC of Kollege.
According to TuksRes cricket, the fields are needed later in the night and therefore matches have to be scheduled early in the day.
Despite having no luck in their efforts to revive res cricket, the teams are appreciative of the fact that they are able to play the game, but also feel that consensus should be reached in order to keep the tradition of having a res cricket league alive and give more students the opportunity to play.
