Two lessons - one on cricket, one on HIV

Cricketer JP Duminy talks on HIV. Photo / Dean Purcell

Seventeen young Auckland cricketers got a double lesson from South African Cricket World Cup players - one in cricket, and another about the HIV virus.

The young players, all aged 13 to 18 from the Howick Pakuranga Cricket Club, learned some useful cricket tips in an hour-long training session with four South African players at Eden Park yesterday.

"We kind of learned that if you like the ball, hit it as hard as you can, and if you don't, just hit a single," said Brandan Laurenzi, 15, who came to New Zealand from South Africa in 2011 and admitted to "idolising some of these guys for most of my life".

Holly Hannaby, 13, one of nine girls there, said: "I learned like always use teamwork."

But the teens also wore T-shirts for the "Think Wise" HIV awareness campaign started in 2003 by the International Cricket Council and the United Nations Aids programme Unaids, and did an exercise in which they each shook hands with five people to see how quickly HIV could spread.

South African assistant coach Adrian Birrell told them about the scale of HIV in South Africa where it affects almost one in five - 6.3 million people, more than in any other country. "All of us have known people that have lost that battle," he said.

Middle-order batsman JP Duminy said people needed to know they could not catch HIV through day-to-day contact with sufferers. Experts told the teens it could not be caught from food or sharing a swimming pool, but only from human body fluids spread through sexual intercourse, breastfeeding and infected needles.

Brennan Honour, 15, said he was surprised the cricketers were involved in HIV awareness, but added: "It was good to get the awareness out there."

Ruben van der Merwe, 14, said: "I definitely didn't know that it can't be spread any other way than through sex. I think it's good for us to learn because there would be a lot of bullying if someone had it."