Finding His Zen
How David Bedingham found his sweet spot
One of the skills one develops as a freelance writer is the ability to reuse content. I wrote this article a few months ago for The Cricketer magazine. Now might be a good time to reshare the article, David Bedingham is in the mix where South African international cricket is concerned.
John Bedingham keeps scrapbooks. 2023 will be the 20th year of him updating them. They were an idea from a junior rugby coach. It was a way to document life in a fun way, the coach had advised him. John did not need further encouragement. By his own admission, John Bedingham is sentimental and the idea to keep scrapbooks appealed to that side of his character. It sounded like a good way to save memories for the future.
He dove in head first. He bought a couple of wedding albums and converted them into scrapbooks. Over the years, the scrapbooks on David Bedingham have grown in number. They are David's life in pictures, event programs, certificates and newspaper clippings. The newspaper clippings do not have to centre on David, as long as David took part in the event, the clippings qualify for the scrapbook.
John Bedingham is never in a rush to put the scrapbooks on visitors’ laps. “They are not brag books,” he says. He hopes his sons will enjoy them in later years. They are accompaniments for the times when David and Rob reminisce about the path they have walked.
It's not unlikely that you will find a picture of a young David Bedingham, probably five or six years old, in a full cricket kit, holding a mini bat. You will also probably find a picture of David with his favourite golf set. Though John introduced the boys to cricket early, there was no grander plan. No big dreams of professional cricket.
“Anyone that has two boys knows that you have to keep them busy. David and Rob are about 12 to 13 months apart and they always had excess energy. Backyard cricket kept them busy and out of mischief,” says John.
One of John's favourite pages features David and Rob playing first-team cricket for Wynberg Boy's High. On the fifth of January 2010, the Bedingham brothers had a match-winning partnership after Wynberg had stumbled early on in their innings. They notched up half-centuries and led their team to victory. “My happiest moments were always when David and Rob played together,” says John.
Maybe it is because it reminded him of how cricket started for both boys. It was a family pastime. John and his wife Debbie introduced cricket to the boys as a way of keeping them occupied.
John was never a talented cricketer - which puts genes out of the question when talking about the immense talent the Bedingham boys possess. Though Rob never pursued cricket professionally, because he enjoyed other things more, David insists the older Bedingham had more talent than him.
The scrapbooks are not just a compilation of the boys’ cricket achievements - they also contain his squash and rugby stories and exploits. John also included his son’s academic, cultural and other achievements. There are even a few pictures of young David performing poetry.
From the day he started keeping the scrapbooks, John’s plan was to hand them over to the boys when they turned 40. On the 5th of December 2016, the plan looked in jeopardy. That afternoon, John received the phone call that every parent dreads, the call that informs them their child has been involved in an accident. “A stranger phoned me and said that I should get through to the hospital as soon as possible, David had been involved in an accident,” says John.
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On December 5 2013, the temperature in Stellenbosch was hovering around the 35-degree mark. Due to the suffocating heat, David stopped playing a golf game after nine holes, he could not play beyond that. All he remembers is that he was about five minutes from Stellenbosch driving to his parents’ house in Cape Town when the accident happened. “I think I fell asleep at the wheel and then hit another bakkie,” says David.
Bedingham’s car was damaged so badly that he had to be cut out of the wreckage. “He almost died in that crash, and that changed him both as a person and as a cricketer. You don’t take your talent for granted after such an accident,” says Eric Lefson. Lefson was Bedingham’s coach at Wynberg Boy’s High School.
David Bedingham’s cricket career is divided into two parts: before and after the accident. Before the crash, he was having a couple of years that made him feel as if he had gone back in time. During his Under-14 year at Wynberg, Bedingham scored 96 runs in eight games. It was the season from hell. His game was in a dark place and it did not look like there was light at the end of the tunnel.
In 2013, the England Under-19 team toured South Africa. It was not an Under-19 World Cup year and the two fixtures between SA Under-19 and the visitors’ tour were among the handful of high-profile encounters they were going to get. After losing the first match, David Bedingham scored a match-winning century (131 runs from 209 balls) to secure victory for the hosts and tie the series.
“After that innings, I thought I had made it. I expected things to happen quickly,” says Bedingham. He dined out on that innings for a while, and this allowed a few other players to go past him because they working hard still while he was still thinking about the 100 he had scored a year or two ago.
But, the recognition was not immediate. When recognition did not come, Bedingham went in search of an innings on the scale of his SA Under-19 knock against England. He never found it. In his rushed hunt for glory, he also failed to build a sensible bedrock of smaller successes on which he could build his career.
After a while, the innings began to fade from the public’s memory and Bedingham’s frustrations with himself grew with each low score he returned.
It was not as if he was not working on his game. On days when he was not playing, Bedingham had two practice sessions in a day. From 10 am to 1 pm, he trained with the Western Province Academy, and then he joined the University of Cape Town Cricket Club for an afternoon training session from 3 to 5 pm. During the South African winter, he played club cricket in the UK.
His life revolved around cricket so much that he had no life beyond the game. But, all that cricket did not translate to runs on the field. Being immersed in the game works for some people, but it did not work for Bedingham.
“I'm not gonna say I trained well, I just trained long hours, and then like when the games came I was overtrained. I had put so much pressure on my own shoulders, that the game would come and I would literally just fold,” says Bedingham.
David Bedingham did not see a bright light ahead of him. Neither did he have an out-of-body experience. But, the accident changed him. It changed how he viewed life and his approach to the game. The near-death experience helped him to realise that there is more to life beyond scoring runs.
“The accident was a massive turning point for all of us. It definitely was a life-changing event, especially for David,” says Bedingham’s father, John.
“After the accident, I found it easier to accept that if I fail, I fail. I developed an appreciation that there are a lot bigger issues in South Africa and the world than scoring runs. I think as soon as I got that mentality, I started doing a lot better,” says Bedingham.
Bedingham spent 2017 in convalescence and returned to cricket in January 2018, joining the Matties’ first team. He hit the ground running, which was unlike him. Bedingham closed out his Wynberg Boy’s High career as one of the most consistent batters the school had ever produced - he scored over 1500 runs at an average north of 50 in his final season - but he had started slow.
“Richard Levi started making hundreds a few weeks after reaching a level. David took a little longer to find his feet,” says Lefson.
After the accident, Bedingham unlocked a new level. A quiet confidence developed and it helped him almost seamlessly move from one level to the next. Instead of trying to rush the process, he allowed cricket and life to come to him at their own pace. The song Calm Down by Rema is the most played tune on his playlist. It is a perfect descriptor of his state of mind. Bedingham discovered his Zen self.
“I just started enjoying the game rather than putting so much pressure on myself. It's my job to try to do as well as I can, and being a chilled person, I handle the game better when I don’t put pressure on myself,” says Bedingham.
The shift in mindset unshackled him. He played a couple of innings for Matties before being snapped up by Boland. He did not last long there either. Three months after joining Boland, Bedingham was on his way to joining the Cobras.
His career gathered incredible momentum, the kind of momentum he had hoped for before the accident. In 2020, barely two years after his return to cricket, Bedingham was on his way to the UK to join Durham. In 2023, after watching international cricket from the sidelines, he made his debut for SA A and was on the cusp of a Test debut.
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Thanks for reading. Until next time… - CS