Chasing the Dream
Long Read - For as long as he can remember, Donovan Ferreira has been going one step forward and two steps backwards in his quest. He hopes that things get better from this point onwards.
Many people know Donovan Ferreira’s story: he was working a full-time job when he made his debut for the Titans and won a few awards that season. Some people like to use it as one of those ‘Never give up on your dreams’ kind of thing. But, only a few know how he got there, and the emotional cost.
Bright lights. That's the first thing Donovan Ferreira remembers from that night. Shop neon lights, vehicles and motorcycles lit up the streets of Dharamshala. There was minimal foot traffic, and a sizeable percentage of them added to the night lights with their cell phones.
Only a handful of people were close to the restaurant when Ferreira and a handful of his teammates ducked inside for a quick look around. When they emerged barely five minutes later, a mob blocked their path to the team bus. The intricate social network of Rajasthan Royals fans had raised the bat signal to alert everyone of the group's presence. The Rajasthan Royals' security had to reenact Moses' miracle to part the crowd.
"People were swarming the bus, slapping the windows and stuff, just trying to get photos of us. You never experience that here in South Africa. If it were to happen, you would think maybe someone is protesting or doing something trying to hurt you or something. Those people were just trying to get photos and be nice," says Ferreira.
This is what it meant to be a superstar, and this was Ferreira's first taste of it. But he didn't know how to feel in return. So, Ferreira whipped out his phone and recorded them while they recorded him and his teammates. His excitement on the occasion matched theirs. It had boiled down to this, 24 years of chasing the dream of playing professional cricket had led to being mobbed by fans in search of a happy story to tie to him and his teammates.
Anita Ferreira remembers the day Ferreira announced his intention to chase the dream of playing professional cricket. For as long as Anita could remember, Ferreira showed a great love for balls the moment he could grab them: cricket balls, tennis balls, rugby balls, and footballs. There is a joke in the Ferreira household that he threw a decent ball before he could walk.
He was never inclined to spend time indoors, and from the moment he could walk, he spent much time chasing one ball or the other in the backyard.
In Grade R, he verbalised his preference for the cricket ball over the rest. When Ferreira's Grade R teacher asked the class what they wanted to be when they grew up, Ferreira said he wanted to be a professional cricketer. It sounded ridiculous to a bunch of six-year-olds, and they laughed at the declaration. Ferreira, feeling misunderstood, cried all the way home.
Anita did what any parent would do in such a situation. She pumped his tires. "I told him everyone cannot be doctors and pilots. People can laugh all they want, but he must never give up on his dream because if you can dream it, you can do it," says Anita.
Kirsten van Heerden, a former Olympic swimmer and now a sports psychologist, says one of the most challenging things about being a sportsperson is letting go of the sport and waking up from the dream of pursuing professional sports. Life after retirement. In her book, Waking from the Dream, van Heerden chronicles the struggles of numerous stars after retirement.
"Penny explains that only after 10 years of retirement did she feel that she was emerging from a long dark tunnel and seeing the light of a normal life again…." She writes about triple Olympian and 14-time World record-holder Penny Heynes. Van Heerden advises sportspeople to lead well-rounded lives before they make it.
Anita did not understand cricket as a sport, nor how one could carve a career out of it. She also made no effort to do so. When Ferreira left for the IPL in 2023, Anita remembers feeling a sudden rush of shame after realising she didn't know what team Ferreira would play for. "I only asked him after he landed in case of an emergency," she says.
She has yet to learn who Kirsten van Heerden is and what sports psychology entails. But Anita made sure that there was more to Ferreira than cricket. The unwritten rule between mother and son was that they never discussed matches. She needed to do so because Ferreira drowned himself in the game. "I always told him, 'To me, you are Donovan, my son. Not Donovan the cricketer.'"
Ferreira needed that balance. At BevCricket, while his peers giggled, air-balled and swung with little direction, Ferreira approached each game with adult intentionality. If he made mistakes with the bat or in the field, he carried them home as his weekend homework. He didn't just love playing it; Ferreira loved all things cricket. On a trip to Gqeberha, the Ferreiras were invited to the BAS factory. Ferreira couldn't wait for the day of the visit. That's all he wanted to do. Nothing else impressed him.
When he was 11, Ferreira grew tired of playing with the Game Stores-bought Kookaburra bat. It just didn't look or feel professional, like the GM Original. So, he entered a bet with his father and Aldin Smith, his coach. He would get the bat if he scored a 100 in his next match. Ferreira made it look easy as he peeled off the runs in his next game. A few days later, he was the proud owner of a GM Original.
That was around the time Cornwall Hill College took notice of him. They offered him a cricket scholarship. Cornwall Hill College wasn't teeming with kids ready for provincial cricket, and Ferreira stood out. He decimated schoolboy attacks with his preternatural hand speed. "Don hit a long ball for a junior kid. At the time, Cornwall Hill didn't have great players, and he was the main player for them," says Rix.
Ferreira was constantly under the microscope, and expectations were high. When he played a blinder, the other parents lionised him. They declared him a winner, a player of substance, the real deal. When he didn't lead the team to victory, they called him arrogant, selfish and plagued by poor shot selection. It was confusing for a 14-year-old.
"This one day, Don asked me, 'Mum, I do 100 things right and one thing wrong, but people will focus on the one thing. Why?'" Says Anita. She didn't understand why parents did that to school kids. To prevent herself from engaging in a war of words during matches, Anita sat as far from other Cornwall Hill parents as she could.
It's a small miracle he didn't develop back problems because he carried his school so much. Pretoria Boys' High School came to his rescue before the pressure became too much for him to handle. "It was a tough decision for us. I am a very loyal person. Cornwall Hill had done so much for Don, but Boys' High could help him so much more," says Anita.
Accepting the Jacques Kallis Scholarship would boost Ferreira's chances of fulfilling the dream, and the Ferreiras did just that. After that, Anita retreated into the shadows.
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Ferreira took guard and braced himself. He kept his eyes on Kagiso Rabada until the last moment, then he closed his eyes and swung, hoping for the best. No one had taught him what to do when facing one of the fastest schoolboy bowlers. Everyone knew Rabada, but no one knew what to do against him. That's why Ferreira was promoted up the order. Pretoria Boys' High's senior players wanted someone to see off Rabada's overs. Everyone crossed their fingers and prayed their sacrificial lamb would survive Rabada's spell.
It was ironic. Ferreira never made the first XI; there was always an excuse for why he had to sit out, and when he came in, he was thrown at the deep end. That was the story of Donovan Ferreira's teenage years. "Everyone would always say they feared playing against me, but then they wouldn't pick me in the provincial team," says Ferreira.
He seemed destined to be the replacement guy, never the first choice. "You know, got promised you're gonna play the next game, you're gonna play the next game, and then when the team sheet comes out, some excuse comes up, and they say no, this player has to play," says Ferreira.
Despite doing well in his under-19 year, Ferreira didn't make the Northerns Under-19 team. He made plans to attend the Rage in Umhlanga, Durban, for his matric vacation. But, he was forced to scupper his plans after one of the players left for New Zealand, and Northerns found themselves a player down. So, they called him in.
Each time he was given the opportunity to play, he played with a hunger and desperation of a player who knows this might be his only chance. He threw everything and the kitchen sink at each opportunity. That's how Heinrich Rix, the CEO and founder of IXU, has known Ferreira, never as a shrinking violet. "He took challenges head-on. He always stood up for himself. Sometimes it got him into trouble," says Rix.
That strength of character and his cricket abilities drew Rix to Ferreira. To make it in cricket, it takes getting multiple opportunities to prove yourself worthy. Ferreira took each moment like his last, hoping that if he did well, he earned himself another one. "If I hadn't seen that seriousness in him, that passion to make an impact, I wouldn't have involved him in our business," says Rix.
Ferreira knew that if he cowed as Rabada ran in, that could end his quest. So, he stood his ground. Ferreira wasn't sure how to approach Rabada, so he scraped. Rabada had no idea as he ran in that he was in for a street fight. Ferreira's eyes were tightly shut on the first delivery as he swung for the fences. He middled the ball. It was unintentional, though it looked intended. It was the first of three consecutive sixes.
It takes advance emails to secure an appointment with the Dalai Lama. He is a man in demand. If being mobbed by adoring fans outside a restaurant was terrific, meeting the Dalai Lama was surreal. All it took was for a few Rajasthan Royals to express the desire to meet him, and it took their front office a moment's notice to secure the visit.
Despite his grand ambitions, not even Ferreira could have dared to dream about these things happening to him before he turned 25. "The IPL happened for me sooner than I thought," he says.
The night after his graduation, Anita Ferreira had asked him what his plans for the future were. Ferreira told her what he said to his Grade R teacher; he would be a cricketer. Though he hoped his path would be smoother than his teens, he braced himself for tough times. The journey proved tougher than he had anticipated.
Ferreira trained with Northerns for three years before he landed an opportunity. One of the regular players split his webbing in a three-day game, opening the door for Ferreira's selection in a one-day match. He blitzed 60 off 30 balls to help Northerns shrug Easterns aside. It did not lead to a regular run. He was handed opportunities in dribs and drabs.
After being made to feel like surplus requirements, the union finally let him go. "Richard (Das Neves) saw me and was impressed with how I played against Easterns. When he heard that Titans had not offered me a contract, he offered me one at Easterns," says Ferreira.
Ferreira shot the lights out and was the leading run-scorer for Easterns in his first season. Despite doing well at the helm, Easterns let go of Das Neves. Shortly after Das Neves' exit, Donovan was shown the door.
"They just sent me an email a month before our last paycheck and said, your contract has been terminated. My agent and I hadn't even looked at other teams because we thought it was a done deal that Easterns would sign me. It's a bitter pill to swallow to get an email saying your contract has been terminated," says Ferreira.
Many are called, but few are chosen. Ferreira understood the phrase as applying to him as he read the termination letter. Years of enduring the pain and disappointment of not being picked and sometimes being picked as an afterthought do things to a person. On the plus side, it builds resilience. On the negative side, it leads to disillusionment. It dawned on him that no one would invest in his talent.
Ferreira had no fight left in him. It was time to move on. He reached out to friends and friends of friends, colleagues and friends of colleagues, hoping to land employment. When those that came back to him asked Ferreira what job he was looking for, he didn't know how to respond. After chasing the dream of playing professional cricket for so long, he had no idea who he was or what he wanted to do.
"My mother, Heinrich Rix, my friends, and everyone in my life said I was too good to walk away from cricket. But I insisted that I was done. The conversations often became argy-bargy," says Ferreira.
Desperate to secure employment and put daylight between him and cricket, Ferreira offered to work for free at IXU. He was confident he would learn the ropes quickly and prove himself an asset.
In Ferreira's mind, he was not giving up on cricket. The money he earned from offering private coaching to youngsters did not cover his expenses. To take care of those expenses, he needed a job. The way he saw it, if he could still play cricket while working full-time. But, if he pursued cricket full-time, he wouldn't be able to work and earn nothing. "He always told me he would look after me and his sister. It's a vow he took seriously," says Anita.
He saw himself playing club cricket, where opponents would sledge him by weaponising his unfulfilled potential. Ferreira saw himself enjoying a drink with out-of-shape teammates after a match. He also saw himself giving pointers to a young club player with dreams of making it, helping him with technique and how to approach the game.
In his mind, he was merely giving up on chasing the dream of playing professional cricket. Even after Richard Das Neves and Mandla Mashimbyi had coaxed him out of retirement by offering a pay-for-play contract, Ferreira held on to his job. He couldn't lose it. "He would go for training early in the morning and at lunchtime," says Rix.
Part of Ferreira's job was to service the Proteas players sponsored by IXU. Those moments were never easy. It was like being shown a future he had been denied. Sometimes he would find himself rushing from handing Faf du Plessis or Heinrich Klaasen whatever bit of kit they needed to a lonely net session.
"It wasn't nice because you see everyone else training as a group, and I had to train alone. So you felt a bit distant, and you felt like the players might not accept you because they think you think you might be better or whatever the case is. But that was my only option," says Ferreira.
Reaching the IPL had come at a high emotional and physical cost. Even though he enjoyed the various perks of being there as a player, Ferreira wasn't just at the IPL to experience what it meant to be a celebrity. Before leaving for the IPL, Rix had told him, "You have money in the bank, but you haven't made it in cricket yet."
Ferreira took the words to heart. "I just wanted to learn as much as possible because, playing your first IPL season, you hear so many guys say you might not get a go. But if you're going to go, be ready. So I went with the mindset to learn as much as possible, take as much information as possible," says Ferreira.
In his first net session, Ferreira kept being bowled by the net bowlers, both spinners and pacers. He kept forgetting that the ball keeps a little lower in the subcontinent than in Gauteng. Kumar Sangakkara and the rest of the Royals' coaching helped him learn how to adapt. As the tournament progressed, he felt his ability against spin improving.
Ferreira spent a lot of time with Joe Root carrying out 12th-man duties. He used those moments to pick Root's brain. He picked Shimron Hetmyer's brain on power-hitting and batting at numbers five and six. He also learned how to plan his innings backwards from Jos Buttler.
When he was not picking the brains of the Royals' star-studded dressing room, Ferreira was happy to be around them, listening to their conversations and taking notes. He would sit and study how they approached their net sessions.
"I think the most important thing was to see how they train and go about things. I also saw that they do things on a different level, how specific they are, and what they want to achieve out of each session. There's always a goal or something they want to achieve or get better," says Ferreira.
Teenage Donovan Ferreira went out guns blazing whenever an opportunity was thrown his way. That is not enough for the adult version of Donovan Ferreira; he also wants to savour every second of each moment. He has earned it tenfold.
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Thanks for reading. Until next time… - CS
