Saltus Grammar School is hosting the inaugural FrayStar Youth Cricket Festival this weekend.

Six teams from five clubs will take to the field on Saturday and Sunday, in what promises to be an exciting two days for the under-15 age group.

Bailey’s Bay, Cleveland, Somerset, St George’s and two teams from Warwick will play 10-over cricket, where each side will be allowed at least one 16-year-old player.

Debra Fray, cofounder of FrayStar, stated the festival was born out of a fruitful trip to England.

“We travelled to England last year and attended the King’s College Cricket Festival, which was a beautiful event,” Fray told The Royal Gazette.

“It consisted of teams which were 14 and under in age and they allowed us 15-year-olds because of the different skill level. We attended that and the boys enjoyed it thoroughly.

“We know there’s a battle between cricket and football now. Last year, it was most definitely no competition, it was football.

“We’re trying to revive cricket in Bermuda as it is a national sport. We need to get cricket to where it needs to be and we need to do it holistically.

“We want to bring that back into the island to our youngsters because it teaches them a lot. It teaches them patience and all of that other good stuff as well.

“Our objective for the festival is simply to give these players an opportunity to showcase their talent because they are not seen.”

Fray indicated that the youngsters taking part in the festival will be at North Field, National Sports Centre, on Saturday to support Bermuda in their final ICC World Twenty20 Americas Sub-Regional Qualifier against Brazil.

“We have two games on Saturday morning,” Fray said.

“We will be playing from 9am to about 1pm because the BCB has requested that we adjust our schedule so that the boys participating can come up and support the senior national team in their tournament.”

“We resume at 9am on Sunday morning to complete the games. We’ll go on as long as we need to on Sunday to finish the tournament.”

Most of the players who featured in the Youth All-Star matches will be in action this weekend.

According to Fray, they were planning a bigger event, but those plans changed in light of an international competition taking place on island.

“Originally, we were supposed to start on Friday evening, then play all day Saturday and all day Sunday,” she said.

“We initially wanted to have it through numerous age groups, but the planning, especially finding out that the international game was this weekend, interfered with our original plan.

“So, we adjusted and we said we would just have it for the older group, which would more or less be our next under-19s, if you look at it.

“These are the boys that would be hopefully selected to travel overseas to represent Bermuda in international competitions.”