Former India coach John Wright has been enlisted to promote the Southern Institute of Technology (SIT) to students in India.
The former New Zealand captain visited SIT's Invercargill campus on Friday to inspect the facilities before a visit to India to promote the polytechnic.
While in India, the SIT international marketing team will be offering five cricket scholarships, worth from $14,000 to $18,000 each, to Indian students under the John Wright Scholarship programme.
Wright said he was impressed with the SIT facilities and looked forward to promoting them in India.
"To go back to India and be fortunate enough to have some scholarships which have been offered by SIT in my name is a great honour for me," Wright said.
"I can't wait to be part of communicating to potential students in India the opportunity to come here."
The scholarships are offered on the condition the successful applicants are available to represent Southland cricket during the summer season.
The prospect of gaining a handful of talented new players is an exciting one for joint Southland Cricket Association chief executive Ian Mockford.
He said the Indian players would need to prove themselves at club level first but could go on to represent Southland if they were good enough.
"If we get that higher level of boys in, it will lift our local standards," Mockford said.
"There's certainly the ability [for them] to play at Hawke Cup level."
Mockford said he would be advising SIT about the type of players that would most benefit Southland cricket, and he believed Wright would have a fair input in the selection of the scholarship students.
Wright, New Zealand Cricket's elite coaching manager, would tour seven Indian cities in seven days, SIT international department general manager Bharat Guha said.
"John is a household name in India," Guha said.
"We hope the visit will double our Indian student numbers."
Guha, a Singaporean of Indian descent, said SIT had 120 Indian students studying in Invercargill.