Defending universities world champions Assupol TuksCricket won the Red Bull Campus Cricket world title in India on Saturday, 24 October. It’s the second year in a row that the team has won the championship and the first team to win it in successive years.
The Red Bull Campus Cricket is a global T20 cricket tournament for university cricket teams to compete for the world title that allows young cricketers to test their skills against top university teams, players from around the world and play on foreign fields in the host country. The six-day-long tournament (19 to 24 October) was held for the first time at Abhimanyu Cricket Academy in Dehondra, India. All the participating teams had won national qualifiers to represent their countries at the world finals. The South African team, Assupol TuksCricket was drawn as Team 1 in Group B along with Sri Lanka, UAE and Pakistan, whilst England, Australia, Bangladesh and India were all drawn for group A.
In preparation for the tournament Assupol TuksCricket played many warm-up matches, two of them against the Cape Cobras, whilst spending two days consulting with former Protea captain, and Indian national coach Shaun Pollock. The team also practised in Dubai in order to acclimatise before the championships.
The team started off by playing Sri Lanka where TuksCricket finished on 134/8 and Sri Lanka won by 2 wickets, this however did not deter the team. Assupol TuksCricket went through to the finals which were played on Saturday, 24 October against England’s Loughborough University. Assupol TuksCricket won the match in the 17th over with 8 wickets in hand. Aiden Makram was the top scorer with 67 runs which also made him Man of the match. He was also the Best fielder of the tournament and Murray Coetzee from Assupol TuksCricket was named Man of the series.
“We planned for everything and we proved ourselves to everyone. I am proud of the success and the culture of this team, and nobody can take that away from them,” coach Pierre de Bruyn said after the finals on Saturday.
South Africa has been supporting the team since the beginning of their season. The boys did very well throughout the season which led them to qualify to participate in India for the finals. Prior to the team leaving for India, they received the Team of the year award at the Gauteng Sports awards, while Coach Pierre de Bruyn was announced as the Coach of the year.
“We would like to congratulate the Assupol TuksCricket team on their outstanding performance during the world championships. We are immensely proud of them as it is a proven fact that hard work and dedication pays off and they reaped the rewards by retaining the crown of being world champions. We are proud of our association with this talented team,” said Rudi Schmidt, Assupol Group CEO.
“Our involvement in sport at grassroots level is deeply rooted in its belief that socio-economic change can be brought to SA’s communities in this way. Cricket has a proven track record of playing a role in bringing positive change to people’s lives and to communities. We are pleased to see how Assupol TuksCricket has grown throughout the years,” concluded Schmidt.
The 2016 Red Bull Campus Cricket world tournament will be hosted at a different nation where once again, only the best university teams from around the world will battle to prove their domination. Assupol TuksCricket can once again be confident in making their international mark as being ranked the number one university team in the world.
Assupol