Dubai: The International Cricket Council (ICC) Under-19 Cricket World Cup defending champions South Africa want to defend their crown to make their star players AB De Villiers and Hashim Amla proud. The under-19 boys underwent a six-day training camp at the ICC Cricket Academy in Dubai Sports City after receiving a pep talk from De Villiers and Amla before their departure from South Africa.
On the last day of the camp, the team visited Shyam Bhatia’s cricket museum to get inspired by the history of the game, inscribed on the walls of the museum and rare collection of memorabilia from legendary cricketers. Speaking to Gulf News at the museum, Tony de Zorzi, the captain of the Under-19 team, said: “AB De Villiers wished us good luck before we came here. He told us that Proteas will be watching us (during the World Cup). Hashim Amla also spoke to us when we had a camp in Durban. We could hear some awesome words of wisdom from him and we obviously are going to do our best to make those guys proud as well.”
De Zorzi is oozing with confidence and spoke with maturity much beyond his age. “Our team will take it game by game and we are getting stronger with every game that we do play - and if we stick to our plan and do what we do best we will give ourselves the best chance to win the cup again.”
When asked whether the team is under pressure of having to defend their crown, De Zorzi said: “Yes we do have pressure. We like to say that pressure is a privilege. We would rather be in a position where we are and looked at as a team that needs to win the World Cup and we obviously want to do the best we can.”
Talking about the camp in Dubai, De Zorzi said: “Thank you to the ICC Academy for hosting us, it was a beautiful place with excellent facilities. In fact, the facilities that were given to us were awesome in terms of nets and playing ground. It was an experience for all of the players just to get some match time before the World Cup and warm-up games.”
Zorzi believes his team has the right combination to win. “Our strengths are across the board. We have a lot of good individuals. One of our strengths will probably be the fact we are a strong unit together. We have each other’s backing and I think that will take us a lot further than other teams when it comes to the crunch.”
