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They could have been figures in a Claude Monet landscape painting: Human forms with elongated shadows, cast at an angle by the setting sun that bathed the Wits A outfield in a bright orange light.

Corné Botha and Donald Dinake were the last people on the field. The student and his coach were all smiles. Hoërskool Noordheuwel had just defeated St David’s Marist Inanda in the Lions region’s Schools SA20 final.

They congratulated each other and waited until the last Noordheuwel team member crossed the boundary rope before they made their way to the dugout. It was a ritual. Botha and Dinake always left the field last.

“Corné is a curious young man. He wants to know why I do things. One day after a match, he asked me why I was always the last person off the field after matches. I told him because as the coach and leader, I must make sure everyone is safe and off the field and no one left anything on it before I walk off. Immediately, he told me that as captain he was going to share in that responsibility,” Dinake explained.

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As a young boy, Botha participated in a few cricket matches before his family caught on to the fact that he was playing the sport. He was seven at the time. The KFC Mini-Cricket train had stopped at Laerskool Krugersdorp Noord and Botha was one of the first students to sign up for it.

“Before then, Corné hadn’t played much or any cricket. We have always watched cricket, but the default sport for most of us was rugby, and we saw him playing rugby with his friends,” Esther, Botha’s mother, shared.

Botha didn’t get his sporting genes from his mother. She grew up in a small town where she did not have any opportunities to test her sporting abilities. His father, Corrie, however, played a bit of rugby and was a decent swimmer in his youth.

When Corrie and Esther learned of their son’s love for cricket, they went out of their way to create more opportunities for him to experience the game. Regular opportunities arose when the family hosted Friday braais.

“All my friends and their families would come for the braai, and we would play cricket until late into the night while the adults hung out,” Botha recalled.

He played more matches in two months of Friday braais than he did at Krugersdorp Noord. Corrie was a product of a small school that did not emphasise cricket. He understood that his son had little hope of progressing in the sport if he stayed at Krugersdorp Noord, so he moved him to Laerskool Kenmare.

“It was one of the best decisions we made for his cricket. At Kenmare, he was exposed to the Super 12 competition. It is one of the most prestigious competitions among competitive primary schools,” Esther explained.

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“Corné has that West Rand fight in him. He doesn’t give up,” Zander van der Merwe, one of Botha’s early coaches, shared.

Van der Merwe met Botha when he was 13. The coach identified Botha as an allrounder and helped him with his bowling action. He worked on his strength and consistency, too. Van der Merwe also taught Botha to think more about his bowling plans and the execution of those plans.

“We also focused on bowling in different periods of the game and how to approach the game,” Van der Merwe added.

Botha was already playing club cricket for the Khosa Cricket Club when he met Van der Merwe. He started in the SU4 team at the club, where he was a teammate of his father, Corrie, who had taken up club cricket so that he could share in his son’s journey and love for the sport. However, father and son did not play together for long. The younger Botha quickly showed that he had a higher ceiling in the sport and he made a rapid rise through the ranks on his way to representing the club’s premier league A team.

“He has that fight in him. When he focuses on a goal, he pursues it with relentlessness,” Minenhle Magubane, Botha’s coach for the Central Gauteng Lions’ u16 team, reckoned.

Magubane first saw Botha at the Gauteng u15 trials, where Botha was tried in three positions: the top-order, middle-order, and lower-order. He scored centuries in all three positions. Instead of being picked for the u15 team, Magubane selected Botha for the u16 team.

“Corné is unplayable when he is switched on. He destroys bowling attacks and makes them look incompetent,” Magubane explained.

Botha was picked as a number eight batsman for the national U16 week. While he did a commendable job with the ball, he did his best work with the bat and finished as the highest run scorer for the Gauteng side, even though he batted lower down the order, at eight.

Magubane regards Botha as one of the best batsmen in the province. The Gauteng coach pointed to the Noordheuwel skipper’s batting statistics from the 2024 St David’s Marist Inanda Fasken Time Cricket Festival as evidence of that.

Botha scored three half-centuries in four innings on his way to finishing as the third-highest run-scorer at the tournament. However, Magubane’s favourite knock of Botha’s was in Noordheuwel’s 66-run victory over St Stithians last year. Playing a 50-over match, Botha smashed a sensational match-winning 136 runs off 95 balls.

“That was a strong St Stithians outfit, and for Corné to do what he did on that day says a lot about his abilities as a batter,” the coach said.

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“Sometimes you want things to happen quickly. You want to play for SA u19 at 16 and play for the Proteas at 21. It will happen for some guys, but it won’t happen for everyone. Sometimes you have to take the longer road.

“I told Corné that the only thing he can do is put his head down and focus on getting better as a player. If he does that, the results will come,” Ronan Herrmann, the Joburg Super Kings’ rookie pick in 2023, shared.

Botha and Herrmann met at Noordheuwel, where Herrmann was also a student. He took the Botha under his wing when he was in Grade 11. The former SA u19 player identified Botha and Ruan Strauss as two youngsters with the potential to go further than their peers in the game, and Botha has taken the guidance and advice he has received from Herrmann seriously.

“One great thing about Corné is that he never complains. He is a great batter. However, if you pick him as a bowler, he does his best with the ball and then makes a statement with the bat. He plays what is in front of him,” Magubane said.

That was one of the qualities that coach Donald Dinake considered when he selected Botha to captain the Noordheuwel 1st XI. Having a good tactical mind is not enough as a basis for captaincy, Dinake opined. The Noordheuwel coach values character, and Botha has the right character.

Herrmann warned Botha about the type of company to keep off-field. Botha listened. He curates the company he keeps around him. At training, he displays a deep hunger for learning and is constantly asking questions.

“One day I told him, don’t forget to be Corné Botha. At home, you are a son. You can’t carry your cricket accomplishments into your parents’ home. They won’t do your chores for you. At Khosa, you learn as much as you can, and here, you learn, but I also ask you to lead your teammates. He took that message to heart,” Dinake said.

Botha takes the responsibility bestowed upon him by his coach seriously. His 135 against St Stithians is a single example in a sea of many memorable moments where the 17-year-old has carried the Noordheuwel team on his back. However, Dinake constantly reminds Botha that his duty as a captain is not to win games for his team, but to lead them with dignity in victory and defeat.

“I always tell him that sometimes losing can be a launchpad because you can learn from losses. So, even in matches where Noordheuwel is not in a position to win, you won’t see Corné dropping his shoulders. He understands that it sends the wrong message to the rest of the team. He gives his all and fights as if there is a chance to turn things around,” Dinake said.

It may seem like an arbitrary figure. However, more than 55 percent of the time that Botha has wielded his beloved GM bat, he has successfully turned things around for his side. And since March 2024, he has been the last person, along with Dinake, to leave the field 100 percent of the time. He takes his responsibilities seriously.

CS Chiwanza is a former poet and now a full-time storyteller of Southern African sports. He jokes that those who can’t do a thing well enough either teach or write. He knows the right way to hold a cricket bat and the right grip for the wobbleball, but can’t do either well enough to be picked for a good team. So he writes. However, he mastered the best dart grip and spends hours stat-padding against his wife and kids.

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