New Delhi: Sixty four leading cricket playing schools from Delhi will select their best under-16 players to participate in the Delhi leg of the Coca-Cola Inter-School Cricket Tournament, scheduled to begin on October 21 and played across seven venues in the city.

This initiative by Coca-Coa India, in association with Procam International, to promote cricket at the grass root level, was announced Mr.Sunil Dev – Hon. Sports Secretary DDCA in the presence of former international cricketers, Saba Karim, Vinod Kambli, Sarandeep Singh and Vijay Dahiya, along with Kapil Chanana, Senior Manager, Integrated Marketing, Coca-Cola and P N Sankaran, Director Operations, Procam International at a press event organized at the National Sports Club of India in the city on Tuesday.

Speaking about the initiative, Kapil Chanana, Senior Manager, Integrated Marketing Communications, Coca-Cola India, said, “Our purpose of getting into grassroots sports tournament is twofold. On one hand, it helps identify and promote young talent and gives them a well charted course to make it big in sports, on the other; it helps us get young children out into sports arenas and grounds. With changes in lifestyle, our children are not spending as much time playing as we would do in our childhood. Also sport promotes social cohesiveness and well-being and hence Coca-Cola has always taken a very active position in sports.”

He further added, “This initiative is unique in the sense that, other than the cricket itself, this also has components of coaching, education in sports medicine and nutrition and exposure for youngsters to international cricket programs. We are confident that this tournament can emerge as a very powerful youth mobilization program. We wish all the participating young cricketers from Delhi city the very best for the tournament”.

“Congratulations to Coca-Cola for giving such an opportunity to the young cricketing talent .I feel it’s a good start, as even me and Tendulkar first gained recognition at the school level, I advise the youngsters to work hard to excel and I am hoping to see a new Tendulkar very soon,” said Vinod Kambli, speaking on the occasion.

Saba Karim, who is mentoring the entire program, said, “I am glad that Coca-Cola has sponsored such an unique initiative, through which talent can be recognized and nurtured .The basic idea with this is to unearth talent so that we can get more players to play at the national and international levels.”

The Coca-Cola Cricket Cup Under-16 school cricket tournament will involve over 200 days of cricketing action spread across a period of 9 month in 65 districts in 8 states and 2 centers, under the aegis of the respective State Cricket Associations. The Coca-Cola Cup is the largest Inter-School Cricket championship in India and will involve participation from over 11,000 young crickets from 700 schools.

The Delhi Intra-City leg of the Coca-Cola Cricket Cup will involve participation from leading under-16 cricket teams from 64 schools in the city, with matches being played on seven cricket grounds, namely Bharatnagar Ground, Vikaspuri - G Block, DPS RK Puram, Model School Barakhamba, Salwan Public School, St Xaviers School and Ramjas Ground.

The tournament will commence on October 21 and will run for little more than a month. Matches up to quarter- final stage shall be of 40 overs, whereas matches from there onwards will be of 50 overs each.

The teams and players performing will stand a chance to wins prizes at each stage post the quarter-final round. The winners & runners up of the Delhi leg will be awarded prizes worth INR 50,000 and INR 30,000 respectively. While all the teams reaching the quarter-finals stage will be presented with T-shirts and caps, the members of the teams that make it to the semi-finals will be presented with cricket kitbags. In-addition, there will also be man of the match awards for each match from the quarter-final stage onwards.