We were supposed to leave with the other Cricket Leinster Transition Year students on January 7th, but Lara was at the training camp with the Ireland women’s squad at La Manga, Spain, so we travelled on our own from Dublin to Johannesburg on January 9th. My brother Juvan met us along with my grandmother on a very hot day compared to the Irish weather on January 10. We are staying with my grandparent’s in Pretoria and our school, Menlo Park, is only a few minutes’ drive away. This school is an Afrikaans school; luckily, we both can still speak and understand this local language. Coincidently, our brother Juvan is a full time cricket coach at the same school. Juvan is also responsible for looking after the Irish group namely us two along with Ryan Tobin another Irish visitor from The Hills cricket club.
The cricket facilities and coaches are of a very high standard. There are about six coaches all are SA Level 2 or 3 coaches. On this link is a tour of some of the cricket facilities available to us at Menlo Park.
We train on a Monday and Wednesday from 6am to 8am with the senior teams, 3rds and 4ths. We also train with the U15’s on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4pm to 6pm. We also get individual coaching. School starts at 8am and finishes at 2pm. All sport activities at the school are in the afternoons from 2 to 6pm. School life is very different here than in Ireland. As part of the exchange programme, a few duties are given to us and we like this very much. We have to assist with coaching, (boys U14 teams), we also do match scoring and a bit of match administrative work. We also are responsible for the BBQ (braai) on a Wednesday afternoon at the cricket clubhouse.
We have not played many school matches to date as this term is mostly friendlies and the real cricket term (season) is in the last quarter of the year. We found it interesting that the team would pray together before and after a match takes place. In this prayer the captain would ask God to protect each player from injuries and that everybody would play their best and after the match the captain would thank God that all went well in the match. We think this is a nice tradition. When we did play with the boys, they and their parents were much surprized that us girls can play cricket. Unfortunately, in South Africa, girl’s cricket is not so big. The reason is the competition between the other sports. Athletics, hockey, netball, water polo and swimming takes preference for the girls here where cricket is seen as more of a sport for boys. We also play a few matches for the women’s team at Irene Villagers cricket club. This takes place on Sundays and we enjoy that very much. It is interesting that the majority of that matches are played in the 35 or 40 over format. Even at the younger age groups too. It changes the game we are used to of only playing 20 over matches. Some matches are day/night matches and all the schools here have floodlights. We played a match at Pretoria Boys High School, this school is famous for its cricket and a lot of the Protea’s graduated from this school. This school has five cricket pitches! Real pitches, there are very few artificial pitches. South Africans are sports CRAZY and you can see all the schools have athletic fields, swimming pools, two or more hockey, netball, rugby fields. Pretty amazing!
We are all enjoying our time here in Pretoria and are very grateful to Cricket Leinster and Menlo Park school for the opportunity provided and we are all looking forward to the weeks that follow, when we are attending school classes.
Lara and Tess Maritz
Malahide Cricket Club/Loreto School, Balbriggan