Central Gauteng Lions women’s captain, Proteas player and teacher Yolani Fourie talks to Dalin Oliver about her cricket career and women’s cricket
Yolani Fourie talks at the KFC Mini-Cricket Seminar about how she has dealt with the lockdown, how she has started playing cricket again as a Protea player, a Gauteng Lions player and as a school coach.
She started playing cricket with her brothers and she played Mini-Cricket but cricket was not that big for girls when she was young and she is happy to see that, through KFC Mini-Cricket, there are a lot more girls playing cricket.
Yolani talks about playing cricket in the subcontinent and playing in front of large crowds. She also talks about being a spinner and bowling in the subcontinent.
Since she started playing cricket, women’s cricket has grown hugely and now she is beginning to see more interest from sponsors. Unfortunately she is getting closer to retiring so she will not be there when women’s cricket get real benefits from the sponsorship.
Following a long hiatus brought about by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, KFC and Cricket South Africa (CSA) are getting ready to launch the new cricket season by hosting virtual KFC Mini-Cricket Provincial Seminars throughout the month of October, across the 16 Provincial Unions.
The annual KFC Mini-Cricket Provincial Seminars are an important part of planning for the season ahead and the virtual environment will lay the foundation for the return of play once government gives the go ahead, hopefully early in the new year.
CSA’s Mass Participation Coordinator, Buhle Motshegoa, speaks about what Cricket South Africa’s plans are for the new season. She sets the standard that is expected from all of the regions and from the nation as a whole.
Cricket South Africa would like the country to play 80 000 matches from when school starts in January until the easter Holidays in April. On the 20th February KFC and Cricket South Africa would like over 5000 matches to be played over the country.
It is time for the kids to get active again.
KFC CSI Manager, Andra Ferreira Nel, congratulated the unsung heroes of the program, that is the coaches, for the amazing work that they have done in the past seasons and asks them to send through their human interest stories so that the nation can see what they do to help kids all over the country.
The KFC Mini-Cricket programme introduces children to the game and is one of South Africa’s biggest grassroot sports development programmes. It is critical foundation stage in the development of South Africa’s future cricketing heroes and is the first phase in CSA’s ‘pipeline to the Proteas’.
Interview with Wandile Gwavu