Director of Wonder Cement Vivek Patni speaks about 'Wonder Cement Saath:7 Cricket Mahotsav'

The “Wonder Cement Saath:7 Cricket Mahotsav” was inaugurated on 3rd November by former Indian captain Kapil Dev in Jaipur. The tournament will commence from 19th December 2015 and will run for four weeks with matches being played on weekends.

The initiative aims at promoting the young cricketing talents across the country.

Vivek Patni, the director of Wonder Cement talked to the Sportskeeda team about the competition and what their plans are regarding the initiative.

When asked about how the idea came into being, he replied, “The thought process came 4-5 months back in an internal discussion as we wanted to spread our brand awareness in the rural market, so we just came up with this idea of cricket and eventually started thinking about it and just landed with the idea of ‘Saath:7’ where there will be seven players and seven overs.”

Scale of event

Almost 4000 schools spread across the state of Rajasthan will participate in the tournament which will attract the participation of 39,840 cricket enthusiasts from over 249 tehsils and almost 10,000 villages across the state.

The total prize money for the competition is about Rs.30Lacs, the winners will be awarded a prize money of INR 3,50,000/- and the runners-up will be awarded INR 1,40,000/-.

In order to play their part in promoting women’s participation in sports, the company has taken an applaudable step to award an additional seven runs to the team which sports a female player in their playing seven.

After 15 hit-out matches between the 16 shortlisted teams, the winning team will emerge as the Team of the Tehsil. Tehsil Teams will then converge at District Headquarters and face each other to shortlist the District Team. 33 District Teams converge at 6 Zones around Rajasthan to identify 6 Zonal Teams. 6 Zonal Teams meet at Udaipur on the 10th of January 2016 for the Playoffs.

Anyone over the age of 15, who is a resident of Rajasthan is permitted to play in the tournament, and the registrations are free of cost.

Here’s the full interview of Vivek Patni, Director of Wonder Cement, given to Sportskeeda.