NC Cricket aims to retain home-grown talent

Northern Cape Cricket (NCC) on Thursday evening launched a junior cricket development scheme at the Diamond Oval in Kimberley which they hope will serve as a feeder to the senior Northern Cape Heat franchise squad.

At the launch the provincial franchise revealed the names of the sponsors who have come on board to support the junior cricket development initiative. NCC president Gibson Moale, announced the names of several corporate sponsors who backed the plan, namely Griqualand Wes Korporasie (GWK), Ekapa Mining and Momentum.

Molale appealed for more involvement by provincially based corporates in assisting with the junior cricket development initiative as well as the senior men’s cricket team.

He pointed out that while the franchise has signed on several talented players to the squad this season, they were unlikely to hold on to those talents for an extended period owing to their demand in the domestic cricket market.

Molale singled out the current first team captain Ernest Kemm, who was also at the launch as part of the NCC entourage. He said the company was unlikely to hold on to the talent of the likes of Kemm especially since Kemm has been a prolific run-scorer in the last few games where he has reached a triple-ton tally.

The president went on to say that they needed a sponsor for the first team so that they could offer better incentives to talented players to stay on at the franchise. As things stand the franchise was likely to lose the services of key players as their value rose with each match played.

“We have nothing in the front of our team shirt. We are playing with a clean shirt (unbranded) We do not have a sponsor … these guys are going to the first division. For them to be there they will need something. Next year (some of them) will leave this province because we cannot afford them”.

Northern Cape Heat head coach Mark Charlton, speaking on the theme of the launch, said, “The first team Northern Cape Heat was in a fortunate position where it was in pole position for promotion to division one of the CSA domestic competitions.

The team had won the 4-Day competition last year and had made it to the final of the CSA T20 Knockout competition as well, Charlton remarked. “So far this season we have recorded two wins from two matches and we currently top the log of this season’s 4-Day competition. Right now we are in a very fortunate position (of the long format).

Charlton said the Northern Cape Cricket board had at its strategic session highlighted two areas that they would like to focus on and put a lot of energy in for sustainable success.

The first was the “upliftment of the cricket pipeline”. This includes the development of young players throughout, from cricket nursery to the top. “This includes creating heroes. In this regard NC Heat are doing a good job of creating heroes and being heroes for the young players of the Northern Cape”.

Charlton said the second leg of the project was to “develop them at home, keep them home and bring them home to the Northern Cape”.

He said the Northern Cape development project spoke to both issues and had the backing of sponsors GWK, Ekapa and Momentum.

Charlton said the high performance training project the franchise; NC Heat completed sometime in August and September this year where the best and brightest new players trained with the senior team had yielded amazing results. Äfter training with us they were completely different players.

“We had 15 young players, ladies and men, from schools around Kimberley. We sent players to schools where they upskilled the young players in their specific skills.It was really cool to see the improvement that those youngsters acquired after those couple of sessions.

“We’ve had eight sessions already and we plan to have eight more.

“The corporates in the Northern Cape have also helped us to have our programme reach out to the communities around those schools.”

Charlton said in terms of the second leg of the initiative, the plan was to, among others, facilitate the return of former homegrown stars to their birth province and to provide them with enough incentives for them to stay in the province and pursue their careers.

Northern Cape Heat will next play against the Tuskers at the Pietermaritzburg Oval from November 17-20.