Ken Borland

It says much for the important role that KFC Mini-Cricket played in his journey that Temba Bavuma, having just settled back into home life after the exuberant celebrations of the stirring World Test Championship final, was willing to hop on a plane from Cape Town and spend the day in Polokwane as the special guest for their 2025 National Seminar.

Bavuma’s standing as an inspirational figure amongst the grassroots coaches in this country was obvious. And fully justified after he had led his team to a place no Proteas team, in the words of Captain Kirk, had gone before – the podium of a major ICC event.

Fans of the famous Star Trek series celebrate Kirk as being the epitome of a style of leadership that is inventive, self-confident but inclusive, brave and unselfish. As the captain of the Starship Enterprise, Kirk was in charge of a leadership team that was highly diverse, given that the TV series first came out in the 1960s – there was an Asian, a Russian, a Scotsman, a Vulcan and an African-American woman – Uhuru – with whom he shared the first ever inter-racial kiss on U.S. television.

Bavuma brings many of the same attributes and has also successfully knit together a diverse Proteas team that is starting to reflect the realities of modern South Africa.

Back here on Earth, and more specifically in Mzansi, there are huge socio-economic issues that make Bavuma an outlier, one of the lucky few Black sports stars who have been able to escape the grinding poverty of township life and fulfil his talent.

Bavuma has paid his dues in terms of all the work he has put into his career, but he acknowledged that he needed the support of programs like KFC Mini-Cricket and a bit of luck to now be rightfully praised as someone who has changed the history of South African cricket.

“A lot of everything started with KFC Mini-Cricket,” Bavuma told the star-struck audience. “I was six or seven when I started playing mini-cricket in Langa and it was mostly older ladies doing the coaching back then. But they instilled discipline and the memories and friendships you make as a child stay with us.

“I left Langa when I was 11 or 12 and I’ve led a fairly privileged life from then. But I was back there this weekend and I still stay in touch with a coach like Mark Khoabane, it’s great that he’s still contributing to the system. It all starts at grassroots and I remember when the West Indies came to Langa in 1999, you could actually touch Brian Lara and Curtly Ambrose.

“I would like to find a way to close the gap between schools in Langa and a place like Bishops, for example. Because if the resources are not there for our children, then we are just offering them opportunity. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel, but it can always be done better.

“From my days at KFC Mini-Cricket, I remember the discipline and how you need to arrive at practice. You’ve got to be brave to go for your dream and to keep going. You must stay true to your passion. And you must have fun,” Bavuma said.

The first Black African batsman to play Test cricket for South Africa became the captain of the team in early 2023, against the West Indies, unfortunately making a pair in his first match as skipper. The armband has kept him on the hop since then.

“Captaincy in South Africa is tough, you have to know politics. First, you have to understand who you are as a person and a cricketer, you have to be comfortable with not having all the answers. It’s about knowing your strengths and what you need to work on.

“Fortunately we have a few leaders in the team: KG Rabada leads through his actions, Kesh Maharaj has a cricket brain you cannot beat and Aiden Markram gets to places in the dressing room that I can’t get to,” Bavuma said.

Former Central Gauteng Lions coach Geoff Toyana, now with Easterns, was the driver for much of Bavuma’s success once his family moved to Johannesburg and he graduated from St David’s Marist. He knows what makes the 35-year-old tick as well as anyone, and the World Test Championship final was an emotional time for Toyana too.

“When Temba was at St David’s, he joined Soweto Cricket Club and that’s when we got close. I was then a selector and assistant coach for Ray Jennings in the 2009 SA U19 team and we spent lots of time together at nets, we bonded. I said to him then that one day he would captain the Lions. I didn’t aim high enough!

“I remember when we met with him at the Lions, he came with a notebook full of his plans. He has always been very thorough and organised. He wanted to bat number four for the Lions, but we still had Neil McKenzie and we said he’ll have to learn from him. I became Lions head coach in 2012 and I backed Temba in all formats, he became a regular in the team.

“When Enoch Nkwe took over as coach in 2018, I told him Temba must be made captain this year. When he was chosen for the national team, I was one of the first people he told – his mother first and then me! It’s been a great privilege knowing him and he says I was more excited than he was, but one of my goals as a coach was to produce a Black African batter for the Proteas,” Toyana told kenborland.com.

It was fitting, then, that Bavuma requested that it be Toyana, and former Lions assistant coach Dumisa Makalima, who picked him up at Polokwane Airport. “Geoff was a coach who gave us a sense of peace. He freed us up and allowed us to express ourselves,” Bavuma said.

Due to the hatred that still infests parts of our society, there has always been a lot of negative noise around Bavuma. But diminutive as he is, Bavuma is a man who stands tallest when times are toughest.

“I’m so proud of him,” Toyana said, “the abuse that little man gets. But he has shown incredible resolve and fight and calmness. He can be really proud of what he did.”

Bavuma is now someone who actively mentors the new generation and he shares how he has managed to overcome the vile, often faceless criticism.

“I don’t make everything personal and I don’t take myself too seriously. I focus on what I can control, which is what is happening in my head and my heart. Anything else, I don’t give too much energy to. But it’s not easy and I’ve seen how it affects the younger guys,” the courageous hero said.

Bavuma has largely done his talking with the bat, and lately it has been shouting out his pedigree as one of the very best. In the last five years, he averages 49.77 in Test cricket; his ODI record is also outstanding: averaging 43.97 at a strike-rate of 87.74.

He plays with a technical assurance which not many other South African batsmen can match.

“Temba is one of the few batsmen gifted with the ability to play the ball late,” Toyana exclusively told kenborland.com. “He still calls me to have a look at his head position from time to time, but his biggest skill is seeing the ball early and playing late. He hits the ball under his eyes.

“And under pressure he stays calm. Like he did at Lord’s, he had to really knuckle down, batting through injury, and he produced something special. It’s huge for the country what Temba and his team have achieved. People are excited about Test cricket again and it will help the whole pipeline, with money hopefully now coming in.”

With the celebrations for the epic World Test Championship win now coming to an end [Wiaan Mulder’s magnificence is rather dominating the limelight now], Bavuma has been able to better process what he and the Proteas have achieved.

“We had a lot of points to prove and a lot to play for at Lord’s. We wanted to do something special for the country and Shukri Conrad and Ashwell Prince had both just lost loved ones. People were having a go at KG Rabada after his controversy. Since then, a lot of beers went down but I think we have a proper perspective of what we’ve done.

“It felt like a home game playing away at Lord’s and we could hear all the different chants from the crowd. When we did our lap of honour, the stadium was still half-full, and to have my family there was so special because cricket takes a lot from them.

“To do it at Lord’s, the home of cricket, was also special, and it was against Australia, the old foes. We couldn’t have scripted it any better. When we came home, I’ve never seen the airport like that and it started to give us a sense of what we had done. It’s been crazy. I’ve just tried to embrace the moment and everything it means. But it will probably take a couple of years before we are properly out of the celebrations.

And then, pointing to The Mace, Bavuma said “That was my biggest motivator, to do something that has not been done before by our country. But to pursue something great or something that has not been done before, you know there is going to be struggle.

“You have to keep finding a way to show up every day, and if you really believe in your dream, and you go for it with all your might, then things will align,” Bavuma said.

The last time I was fortunate enough to attend the KFC Mini-Cricket National Seminar was five years ago in Kruger Park, so it was wonderful to see CSA’s flagship development programme has lost none of its energy or passion when I was invited to this year’s annual gathering, held at Zebula Golf Estate outside BelaBela last week.

This mass participation grassroots programme, which will celebrate its 40^th anniversary next year, is operated by the noble crew of 10 500 volunteer coaches, working closely with the sponsors and CSA’s development office.

Some of the bile that has been thrown around in cricket circles over the last couple of years has been difficult to stomach, but being able to share in an environment where everyone is just working for the love of the sport, where egos are put to the side because this is the grassroots game, is gratifying enough to cure the most severe indigestion.

Graeme Smith, as director of cricket, has had to deal with much of that bile, but he was happy and relaxed at Zebula, being asked for plenty of photographs by the delegates after his address on the first morning.

“I basically just gave them an update of where cricket is and then it was great to sit through the sessions with them,” Smith said.

“I feel like I’ve been starved of being on the ground with these sort of cricket-lovers. It’s so exciting to be here, this programme is nearly 40 years old and has been a massive investment in the game at all levels.

“All credit to the volunteer coaches and co-ordinators who grow their communities and are mentors for the youngsters. It’s so important that kids have the opportunity to be touched by the game and I know how important KFC Mini-Cricket is to CSA.

“These coaches are the life-blood of our game and I’ll be surprised if there are any other development programmes in this country that come close in terms of reach,” Smith said.

Unfortunately though, like everything else, the effectiveness of the KFC Mini-Cricket Programme does come down to how many Rand are in the bank for CSA.

The organisation held its AGM last weekend and the financial statements clearly showed the serious effects of Covid and how important it is for the Proteas to be a ‘box-office’ team on the global stage.

CSA still has total assets of R797 million, but they suffered a nett loss of R221 million in 2020/21, having budgeted for just a R177 million deficit.

This was largely due to broadcast revenue plummeting from R534 million to R161 million. Having made up almost half of CSA’s revenue the previous financial year, broadcast rights now only accounted for 31% of profit. Sponsorships also dropped from R186 million to R79 million, 15% of revenue.

Accordingly, in an environment of sometimes brutal cost-cutting (but pleasingly with no employees laid off because of Covid), investment in development dropped from R385 million to R273 million.

So anyone who wants to see the game in this country truly transform has to also acknowledge that the Proteas have to be one of the best teams internationally. That’s the only way the Big Three will want to tour here, generating the lucrative broadcast rights that are by far CSA’s biggest revenue-earner.

And KFC Mini-Cricket has certainly produced its fair share of Proteas – Beuran Hendricks and Sinalo Jafta were two in attendance at Zebula. But the programme also wants to empower the coaches, while bringing an estimated 118 000 kids from diverse schools and communities together this summer, introducing them to cricket and also getting them active.

 

Eight months ago, Clive Eksteen was ‘just’ a former Test cricketer whose passion for the sport remained. But now he has to apply the same cunning he showed as a spin bowler to Cricket South Africa’s commercial operations and this week he was dishing out praise to the KFC Mini-Cricket programme where it all begins in terms of the game in this country.

“This is where it all starts, it would be so much harder for us to implement our plans without a program like this,” Eksteen told the KFC Mini-Cricket National Seminar at Kruger Park. “This is not only about the pipeline, it goes way beyond that. We want to get cricket to all 55 million people in this country, to create a love for the game. Cricket has got to make a difference in this country, it has to play a crucial role, and it starts with the little kids. There are more than 100 000 involved in the programme, thanks to the more than 8000 coaches, which is enough to fill all six of our international stadia.”

“When Temba Bavuma played that awesome knock at Newlands, the TV ratings went through the roof and from that we can see how big this game can become in South Africa. We had 14 million unique viewers watching cricket last season and there were 500 000 tickets sold for people to go watch the cricket at the ground, which is 68% more than the previous year,” Eksteen said as he applied factual numbers rather than spin to his mode of attack.

For CSA, it is just as important to cultivate customers for their product: to have cricket fans going to the matches or watching on TV.

“We have the most diverse following of any sport in South Africa but we’re not finished yet, cricket must get to every part of the country, we want to create a passion for the game. It’s a hard sport, but it teaches you a lot and you make friends for life.

“There’s no doubt we have fantastic talent second to none, but not all the kids will become reasonable cricketers let alone internationals. But they can become passionate followers and that’s a win for us from a commercial point of view. Full stadia, people watching the game, that’s what drives the sport. For sponsors, it ultimately comes down to numbers and when your first program starts with over 100 000 kids, from very diverse backgrounds, then that’s a massive plus.

“Coaches make the biggest impact on kids and KFC Mini-Cricket creates that passion and love for the game, it’s our flagship program and the beginning of how we sustain the game,” Eksteen said.

 

To make a star one needs enough heat and pressure to start nuclear fusion in a cloud of gas, but in a cricketing sense it’s all about CSA’s pipeline and KFC Mini-Cricket provides the masses of raw material that are necessary to find the ones that will glow brightly on fields around the country in the future.

KFC Marketing Director Thabisa Mkhwanazi says it is the biggest grassroots development program in the country, which is a big call, but the numbers back her up. More than 114 000 kids from 5584 schools were involved in the program last season, thanks to the dedication of nearly 9000 volunteer coaches and the excellent custodianship of CSA’s mass-participation manager, David Mokopanele.

Corrie van Zyl, CSA’s general manager of cricket, makes an even bigger call and says it is the best development program in the world. The fact that countries like Australia, India and England have been in contact wanting to know more about KFC Mini-Cricket, especially their marvellous Kids v Proteas Tour, suggests he may be correct.

I was privileged to attend the KFC Mini-Cricket National Seminar held in Kruger Park this week, which is an incentive for the top coaches of the previous season, a celebration of what has been achieved and a focused look at their future targets.

It may surprise some to know that I don’t recall hearing the word “transformation” once over the two days and that’s simply because, at that level, both coaches and players are already predominantly Black. Colour is one thing, but fixing the socio-economic conditions that make it so hard for any talented boy or girl to make it from the vast rural areas of our country is another matter altogether and KFC Mini-Cricket is probably the best weapon we have when it comes to taking the game to greater portions of our population.

Van Zyl was one of the speakers who addressed the delegates drawn from all 16 affiliates of Cricket South Africa and he pointed out in no uncertain terms that excellence at the highest level was non-negotiable, but that it was also dependent on grassroots development and vice-versa.

The former international fast bowler and national coach used the example of The Oaks Cricket Club from a small village near Hoedspruit where Cavaan Moyakamela, a coach with an extraordinary love for the game, mentors 70 children on a concrete slab.

“Imagine if a guy from The Oaks is chosen for the Limpopo U13 side, he will bring great passion and we can use and enhance that. Our dream is that a kid from that area can become a Protea, but there will be performance gaps – socio-economic factors that affect his health, physical and psychological development and his lifestyle – that we need to close for him.

“We cannot change the benchmark of international cricket, we have to take the players to that standard, and the responsibility of our coaches is to get the player there. If we don’t maintain excellence at international level then the grassroots suffers because we need money to develop that. They both depend on each other because the grassroots is the base of our game.

“KFC Mini-Cricket is the biggest part of that base, it is strong and built on the passion and dedication of the coaches. If we are to maintain excellence then we need quality coaching, so we need to grow coaches so the kids can grow under them. The growth of the program has been so good that with that base, the cream will rise to the top,” Van Zyl said.

Temba Bavuma spoke movingly about how he was first introduced to cricket via the program, getting to run around on the same Newlands ground where he scored his historic maiden Test century last summer; AB de Villiers is also a product, while the program is going strong in the remote regions of the former Transkei and Limpopo. It’s reach will only increase thanks to the wonderful news that KFC have extended their sponsorship of the program for another 10 years.

When the Kids v Proteas Tour came to Umtata, it was like the world’s greatest bazaar had hit town, such was the reaction.

“It brought Umtata to a standstill! Their little school was playing against the Proteas and it was magical. Many of the communities we have stores in hunger for this sort of development and our dream is for young people to look back and remember ‘the day KFC came to my small town with cricket’,” Mkhwanazi says.