The Castle Lager Proteas, fans and sponsors knocked cancer for a six by raising R600,000 for PinkDrive at the recent Pink Day Momentum One-Day International held at the Bidvest Wanderers Stadium on Sunday 18 January 2015. The visiting West Indies team also got involved to make the third ODI a ‘pink’ day.
The match will go down in the annals of cricket history as one of the most electrifying, as local hero AB de Villiers broke the world record with a phenomenal fastest century in a one-day international, with 100 off 31 balls and the most sixes in an ODI (16). Pink is obviously a good colour for the Castle Lager Proteas as they have never lost a game when wearing pink.
Corporate donations were sizeable, including that of Bidvest who pledged R49,000 for every ball touching the boundary ropes. But it was also the fans in the stadium and around the country that showed their massive support for breast cancer awareness and Pink Day with donations of over R200,000 from close to 11,000 sms’s sent (R20 per sms) and R48,000 collected from donations and memorabilia sales at the stadium on the day.
PinkDrive is one of South Africa’s foremost Breast Cancer Community Carers, which centres around mammography and breast health and the premise that ’early detection saves lives’. In conjunction with Bidvest’s continued support of this worthy initiative, Konica Minolta Medical South Africa’s (KMMSA) involvement has enabled the PinkDrive mobile units to be fully equipped with the medical equipment needed to make them digitally compatible. This includes installing the RamSoft PACS system that enables immediate reporting from wherever the mobile units are currently operating.
In conclusion AB de Villiers said: “It was an absolute privilege for the Proteas to be part of the most successful Pink Day to date. I've said before that this is a day on the cricket calendar that we all look forward to participating in and the 2015 Pink Day was special for many reasons.”