Big Mitch
Mitchell van Buuren is making waves, it's in his nature
Mitchell van Buuren has an eye for good bats. He always had a good eye for them and always had the best bats as a youngster. He also has a good eye for fashion. Most importantly, he has a good eye for the cricket ball.
Mitchell van Buuren is a clutch player.
The ball was seaming and Zakariya Paruk was unstoppable. When Mitchell van Buuren came in to bat after 10.2 overs, Paruk had taken three wickets for eight runs in five overs. The Gauteng Under-19 team was on 14 for three. They were in a hole and van Buuren dug them out of it. He stitched two partnerships, one Wiaan Mulder worth 109 runs and a 110-run fifth-wicket stand with Muhammed Mayet, on his way to 106 off 123 balls to lead Gauteng to 241.
“That was his modus operandi. He is not fazed by a crisis,” says Gordon Matheson, van Buuren’s coach at King Edward VII. “That performance in Bloemfontein mirrored how he played in his maiden first-team match for KES.”
Matheson had been forced to field weakened KES (King Edward VII High School) first team. About four of his stars had gone off to play in the 2015 Khaya Majola Week. Nelspruit Hoerskool put up a competitive 220 on the board, only for van Buuren to come in and make light work of it with a 70-ball 100. KES cruised to a 10-wicket win. “He was playing outrageous shots. Some of his cover drives landed on the tuckshop roof,” says Matheson.
He played with so much flair that Matheson gave him a moniker: King Flair. Others called him Big Mitch. Van Buuren has never been physically big or imposing, but his personality did all that, especially on the cricket field. If a match was in the balance, you could count on van Buuren to swing it in your favour with bat or ball. As a schoolboy, he was a decent spinner and considered himself an all-rounder. He could turn the ball away from both right and left-handers.
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Van Buuren was one of the four players, Tony de Zorzi, Shane Dadswell, Liam Smith and himself, who lived in the KES nets. All four breached the 1000-run mark in a single season, a remarkable feat in schoolboy cricket. Of the four players, Matheson thought van Buuren was the most likely to score a double century in one-day cricket.
In 2019, at 21, van Buuren became the first South African cricketer to score a double century in List A cricket in 44 years. His double ton is the third by a South African in 50-over cricket after Graeme Pollock’s unbeaten 222 against Border in 1974 and Alan Barrow’s 202 not out against SA African XI in 1975. “After the match, we spoke and the first thing he said was, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t score a double century for you at KES. You were right, it was there inside me,’” says Matheson.
The 200 came as he navigated the Gauteng Strikers out of a sticky situation. When he arrived at the crease, the Strikers were struggling on 28 for two after 5.1 overs. Van Buuren did not score a single run in the first 10 deliveries he faced. He had five runs to his name after 17 deliveries and hit his first boundary, a six, on the 18th ball he faced. From that point onwards, all hell broke loose. He averaged a boundary every 5.46 deliveries he faced from that stage until his dismissal. He scored a match-winning 200 from 159 for a strike rate of 125.78 to lead Gauteng to a total of 335 for seven.
“He was hitting the ball absolutely sweet that day,” says Stephen Cook, the SA20 Head of Cricket Operations and former teammate of van Buuren. The two played together for Gauteng during Cook’s last couple of years as a cricketer. The two go back further than the Gauteng Strikers. They attended the same school, KES - 20 years apart. “He has always hit the ball well on the golf course and you can see why he is effective with the bat. And his wrists are from his hockey days.”
Jimmy Neesham served him a slower-ball delivery outside the off-stump. Van Buuren gave himself room and picked the gap between backward point and short third man to claim four runs. It was the ninth delivery he had faced. Two balls later, he struck his second boundary.
The Royals were on 69 for three when van Buuren joined David Miller in the middle. The visitors had lost two quick wickets and needed to stabilize the innings before launching. That didn’t faze them, they had been on this rodeo before, albeit on a different pitch.
Two days earlier, the Royals and the Capitals had locked horns at Boland Park. In that contest, van Buuren and Miller rescued the Royals’ innings with a 61-run partnership that saw the home side out of the woods and onto a path that led them to 160 for seven. The van Buuren-Miller partnership was characterised by the pair hitting the ball into gaps and running hard. The 25-year-old hit a single four and one six on his way to 28 off 21 balls.
In the innings at Boland Park, van Buuren and Miller manipulated gaps and ran hard. At Supersport Park, van Buuren struck a boundary every 7.2 deliveries. King Flair was in town.
The pair smashed a combined 15 fours and six sixes in their 141-run partnership. They needed 31 balls to bring up their 50-run partnership. They shaved off a single delivery on their way to their second 50, and the final 44 runs came off 11 balls. Their unbeaten fourth-wicket stand steered the Royals to 210 for three. It is the highest fourth-wicket partnership in SA20 cricket and the fourth-highest partnership in the tournament.
During season one, the Royals depended on the experience of guys like Dane Vilas and van Buuren featured in only five matches. He did not shoot the lights out when he got a go. He scored 32 runs for an average of 10.66 at a strike rate of 88.88. He scored a paltry two fours and a single six. The season two version is a different gravy. He is cementing his position in the Royals lineup.
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Thanks for reading. Until next time… - CS