The Greyt Bash 2019 – Where Tradition meets Innovation

The annual XHealth Greyt Bash was held this past weekend down in Bloemfontein at the prestigious Grey College. The annual event is in its 4th edition and was founded in 2016.

The internal tournament took place this past weekend on the 30th and 31st August 2019.

DigiTV Streamers were looking to defend their title.

The top of group A played the second placed team of group B and visa versa in what is a semi-final. The final is played between the two winners of the semi-final round and is played on the Johan Volsteedt Cricket Oval.

DigiTV covered two of the fields during the weekend and all games can be caught up on the Grey College TV channel. A newly introduced trophy the Garnet Stevens Fair Play Trophy which was won by the Tyre Mart Titans and their broadcasting team who live streamed most of the matches.

Grey College has had its fair share of ex-Proteas having come through the ranks at the school such as former Proteas captain Hansie Cronje, opening batsmen Boeta Dippenaar as well as former Proteas bowler Victor Mpitsang.

The format been played has taken aspects of the traditional game and modernised it to make the game more exciting, more explosive and takes a lot quicker to finish. With the newly announced franchise competition The Hundred set to take place in the United Kingdom from 2020, it seems as if Grey College may have gotten onto the bandwagon at the right time.

How the Greyt Bash compares to the rules implemented in The Hundred will be one which generates great interest amongst the schoolboys taking part?

The rules are slightly different to traditional limited over rules and are made up of some of the following new ones. Teams have 60 minutes to finish their allotted overs of a 100-ball innings which consists of 15 normal 6-ball overs and one single 10-ball over. An innings is broken up into two double innings contests of 8 overs each.

The first five overs of the innings comprise of the normal field restriction. Teams will bowl all overs from the Northern side of the ground before swapping over. The most exciting part of the new format is the introduction of the single 10-ball over which the batting team needs to take between the Powerplay and the 13th over.

During the over both batsmen can be dismissed on the same ball effectively meaning a player can be caught and the non-striker can be run-out.

The tournament looks to give players of different age groups the opportunity to test their skills against older and more experienced players. This can only have a positive outcome on the depth of Grey’s cricket teams. The players enjoy the new format and forms part of their pre-season campaign prior to the other formats starting.

The opportunity to play with coloured clothing and white balls adds to the excitement of the tournament. Teams are selected during an auction evening where corporate sponsors buy the naming rights for the team.

With this added backing from local businesses this tournament starts to feel like one of the new franchise based T20 tournament’s which is taking the cricket world by storm. Adri Swanepoel, the director of cricket at Grey College had the following to say about the tournament, “The good relationships we build with our sponsors, is our recipe for success.”

PHOTO: Marnus van Wyk