A 22-YARD DREAM

Sept. 24: Twelve boys from St. Xavier's Collegiate School are counting hours to tomorrow. What has them all excited is not a mega pandal-hopping plan but a trip to South Africa to play cricket and watch penguins and whales at lesiure.

The members of the Xavier's cricket team, accompanied by principal Benny Thomas, is scheduled to leave the city tomorrow on a 12-day-tour that will see them play three T20 matches and a 45-over game in Capetown.

This is the second consecutive year that the team is going on an international tour. They visited Leicester in England last year and won five of the seven matches they played against school teams there to win the Goodwill Cup.

The core team remains the same except for three new faces, including Vishesh Soni of Class VIII, the youngest player in the squad.

"We are lucky to get an opportunity to play cricket in different conditions and learn how to adopt to conditions there," said Shashvat Kumar, a student of Class XII (science) and the captain of the team.

The 45-over match will be against a combined team of Gary Kirsten Cricket Academy and The Cricket Academy XI. If Kirsten, who was India's coach when it won the ICC World Cup in 2011, is not travelling, the students would get to interact with him as well.

"I'll ask him why he retired right after the World Cup," said Kritin Jhunjhunwala, a batsman and another fresh face in the team.

The boys will play three T20s against the age-group teams of Diocesan College and Durbanville and Sunningdale cricket clubs.

"These three matches will be like a bilateral series. It's like three matches India would be playing against South Africa, albeit different teams," said Pradyumn Kajaria, a member of ALSOC, the school's old boys' association.

Kajaria and another ALSOC member, Varun Modi, will accompany the team to South Africa like they did to England last year.

At the start of the tour, they will meet former South African cricketer Paddy Upton at his academy, where they will attend a practice session.

In between all the cricket, the boys will visit the Boulders Beach Penguin Colony, where they can observe African Penguins that were once called Jackass Pen guins for their hilarious baying call. They will also get on the cable car at Table Mountain and have a full day of whale watching.

The Cricket Academy, which is hosting the St. Xavier's boys, has also said "there will probably be" an interactive session with a current South Africa cricketer but kept the name a secret.

"All of us want the surprise player to be A.B. de Villiers," said captain Shashvat, a middle order batsman and off-spinner.

If the team was on the same page on A.B., they weren't so about the shirt numbers on their back - a new addition to the school's cricket gear this year.

"As soon as I asked for preference of numbers on the shirts, there were many who wanted Virat Kohli's No. 18. I had to ask one of the younger guys to let a senior boy have it although he had asked first," said Shashvat, who reserved Dhoni's No. 7 for himself.

Sahil Choudhary, a die-hard fan of Hardik Pandya, got number 33.

But all that is done and dusted and the team is one again and looking to repeat in Proteas Land the success story of the last English summer.