Eight Hundred little ones gathered for the KFC Mini-Cricket Provincial Festival at the Maties Cricket Club on Friday.
The Western Province KFC Mini-Cricket Provincial Festival featured local players Shawn von Berg and Christiaan Jonker, who both started their cricket in the Mini-Cricket Programme.
The theme of the programme is “recovery” after a lost season due to the Covid-19 pandemic. “The focus is to recover the programme and get kids playing KFC Mini-Cricket again,” says Buhle Motshegoa, Cricket South Africa’s Mass Participation Manager. “We would like to encourage schools that are still a little hesitant to playing sport, to get back to the field and play cricket in a safe way, observing all Covid-19 protocol. The safety of the kids and the coaches is very important to us.”
The programme aims to help young players grow, develop, and shine. Since the inception of the programme, some 2,5 million kids have played KFC Mini-Cricket and over 120 players have gone on to play for South Africa in various teams.
“KFC takes great pride in being able to invest into the youth, making a meaningful difference across the communities we operate in,” said KFC CSI manager Andra Nel. “In the last 12 years KFC, through the programme, have been providing an opportunity to change kids’ lives, so we are excited to continue with this legacy by starting the cricket ‘imvuselelo’ season. This programme will continue to impact kids’ lives once more as we encourage them to get active, learn life lessons and bring joy back into kids’ lives by again being able to play the game they love.”
In the previous full season, 2019-’20, there were more than 126 000 kids from over 6 600 schools active in the KFC Mini-Cricket programme, who are coached by over 13 600 volunteer coaches. Year on year there are a minimum of 45 000 matches played each year. KFC has sponsored KFC Mini-Cricket since 2010 and in the 2012-’13 cricket season KFC became the title sponsor of the KFC T20 Internationals.
