North West Cricket Dragons Youth & School Cricket
North West Cricket manages circuit, district and regional and provincial school cricket that takes place both during the season and out of season.
The Hub system caters for schools in disadvantaged areas at a central venue and provides for the coaching, and playing of matches.
Identified players get more opportunities as well as improved coaching at Regional Performance Centres.
The Hubs provide a link to the CSA High-Performance Pipeline through selection into Provincial Age Group teams and Regional Talent Acceleration Camps.
School Cricket Players identified at school level programs then progress to attend the Regional & National Talent Camps at U/16, U/17, and U/19 levels.
National age group Tournaments
CSA funds national youth cricket tournaments at the following levels and age groups: U13, U15, U17, and U19 Boys / U19 Girls and Rural Boys U17. The majority of all costs are covered by CSA and cost implications to parents for their attending children should be minimal.
The youth cricket tournaments are both aspirational and also form a major part of the talent identification process. Tournaments are awarded to CSA Members according to set criteria, which include the availability of fields, accommodation and the capacity of the host province.
Selection processes start at district level. Teams must be adequately prepared for tournaments through nets and warm-up matches.
At the Khaya Majola week, the National under-19 selectors select an SA Schools and SA Schools Colts team which play one match each at the conclusion of the tournament against the host Province.
The selectors are nominated through the schools and Provincial structures.
U19 Coca-Cola Schools’ T20 Challenge
The purpose of this competition is to provide an incentive for all cricket-playing schools and to also create an avenue for new and emerging schools to start playing cricket as well as for those schools that stopped playing cricket to start once more.
Schools are incentivised to win by receiving prize money at Provincial, Regional, and National level. All regional winners qualify to play in the National T20 Finals week.
Incentives for all schools are in place which means that should they qualify for the Finals week and have achieved Blue Chip status on the Schools Quality Index, they will receive a further incentive.