Promotion of tiger conservation through cricket

A Twenty20 tri-series involving two Karnataka Premier League (KPL) sides and a club from New Zealand will be played from July 10 to July 13. The objective of the tri-series is to create awareness for tiger conservation.

Manish Pandey led Mysuru Warriors and the Belagavi Panthers led by Vinay Kumar, are the two KPL teams. The Hutt Hawks is the team from New Zealand, which is a club based in Lower Hut, Wellington. The team from New Zealand, comprising both under-19 and under-16 cricketers, have represented the Wellington State in competitions.

Cycle Pure Agarbathies will be sponsoring the series. Arjun Ranga, MD of Cycle Pure Agarbathies, said their association with this series was a natural progression of their commitment towards sustainable development.

India off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin inaugurated the 50-overs-a-side series at the Marina ground on Tuesday morning.

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Quite a few promising youngsters such as Sushant Balajee, Troy Johnson, Rachin Ravindra, Chander Ravi and Matthew Boswell are featuring in the series. Ravi Krishnamurthy, coach-player of the team said that the idea behind this was to get more exposure and to make the young Kiwi cricketers better all-round players.

“They should be exposed to various types of wickets and conditions. Before coming here, we played in Bangalore and Mysore, and the boys, when they return to India wearing the New Zealand colours, would be better equipped to cope with the challenges,” he said. He added that he also has plans for a similar tour to Australia and England too.

The series will have a round-robin structure with the three teams playing each other 3 times in the league stage. The venue for the matches will be at the Marina and the SPIC-YMCA grounds. The games will be played in the senior (under-19) and junior (under-16) categories.

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