MSBSC to the Australia Blind Cricket Carnival 2015

The Manukau South Blind Sports club is a sports and social group for blind and vision impaired individuals. Our membership includes individuals from as far North as Dargaville down to the Waikato and even someone from Ashburton!

The club itself was started in 2004 to accommodate a member base in South Auckland but has grown and spread as we have been able to offer a larger variety of sports/activities for individuals.

Our members are involved in a variety of sports including blind hockey, blind lawn bowls and goalball. We also do a number of social activities such as indoor rock climbing,, ten pin bowling, blind soccer and swish. Our main sport, and the initial sport that got our club up and running, was/is Blind Cricket. Our team are the current national Champions of our annual T20 summer series tournament.

We have attended an Australian blind cricket carnival previously and 2 of our players attended an All Abilities blind cricket tournament in Melbourne in March 2015, playing for the South Australia side who also won the inaugural tournament.

It has been 8 years since an NZ side was last invited to attend an Australian Cricket Carnival but these tournaments are of huge benefit to players wishing to better there skills for future international prospects. The tournaments allow our players to play against a higher calibre of player, faster bowlers, stronger batsman, better grounds and a more competitive environment in general.

In order for us to attend such a tournament, as well as general fundraising, each player has been asked to contribute $1,800. This money covers, airfares, accommodation, entry fees, lunches on game days and official dinners. The tournament itself runs from 28 December 2015 to 7 January 2016 and consists of 2 forms of blind cricket, a Twenty Twenty tournament which will involve 6 teams (the Manukau South team being one) and a 40 over match which will consist of 4 teams. The Manukau South team have put our players in the player pool for this part of the tournament as we feel they will greatly benefit from the experience of being included in these other sides where they can learn while playing from these sides as well as allowing them the experience of playing against some of their own home side players.