One step closer
Neil Timmers is one step closer to achieving his dream
Neil Timmers was playing a different game.
Gregory, his father, could take his eyes off him, and neither could the other parents watching from the edge of the field in little clusters. Gregory had arrived at the u9 regional tournament without any expectations. His message to Timmers had been that the youngster was here to have fun and make memories. He hadn’t expected the memories to be these ones.
However, Ruan and Erik, Timmers siblings, were not surprised. They had been battling Timmers in the backyard for the past five years and had first hand knowledge of his destructiveness. Whether it was with their shared plastic bat or his beloved M2 bat, Timmers’ sole purpose had always seemed to be slapping his brothers’ deliveries around the backyard.
Gregory and Julie equally apportioned the responsibility for broken windows, which they replaced and repaired windows several times, to all three, but Ruan and Erik knew that Timmers was responsible for 90% of the breakage. Gregory must have come to that realisation as he watched Timmers go hard at the opposition.
“I have gone to most of Neil’s matches, and none stands out for me as much as that one. It was his first hundred and he did not give a chance. It was faultless,” Gregory said.
The field was close to two rugby fields and Timmers kept trying to strike the ball through the nearest set of poles. He succeeded twice, with a pull shot and a slog sweep.
In an alternate universe, Timmers goes to Afrikaanse Hoër Seunskool (Affies), the alma mater of AB de Villiers, Faf du Plessis, and Dewald Brevis, among many others. He fast-tracks his skills development by competing against some of the province’s best young cricketers for a spot in the school’s first team.
He makes all the Northerns provincial teams and graduates to the South Africa u19 team before making his debut for the Titans months after writing his matric exams.
Instead, the left-hander chose to join his friends and his older brother, Ruan, at Helpmekaar, despite having secured a spot at Affies. Unlike Affies, Helpmekaar has neither a rich cricket history nor world-class facilities. Competition for first-team berths wasn’t as intense as at Affies; his first-team debut for Helpmekaar as a Grade 8 pupil tells the story.
However, unlike prodigies, Timmers didn’t step up and dominate from the onset. Despite showing flashes of brilliance, he took a while before taking his place at the head of Helpmekaar’s first team.
“As an ‘Afrikaans boytjie’ from a so-called rugby school, it was entertaining to see him and his mates putting famous cricket schools to to the sword at fixtures and festivals around the country. He helped us develop a true grit, never-say-die attitude that has become the trademark of Helpmekaar cricket,” Willie van den Berg, Timmers’ coach at Helpmekaar shared.
Van den Berg describes Timmers as one of the best wicket-keepers he has ever coached. The left-hander honed his craft under the watchful eye of Jolene Campher from an early age and stood up to almost all of Helpmekaar’s bowlers, which allowed him to execute an incredibly high number of stumpings.
With the bat, he was simply outstanding. Timmers was the batter whom Helpmekaar relied on to hold the innings together after a collapse and to bat to the end. So, they slotted him at four in 50-over games and asked him to open in T20s.
“He has always been a big hitter, a long hitter of pace and ferocious against spin. His exceptional hockey skills made him dominant against spin - he was great at sweeping, reverse-sweeping, and slog-sweeping,” Van den Berg recalled.
While it took him a while to flourish for Helpmekaar, it took him even longer to break into the provincial set up. Part of the reason for that was the inherent bias against players from ‘small’ cricket schools. When people looked at his accomplishments for Helpmekaar, they saw a big fish in a small pond and questioned if he would succeed in a dam.
“If you care about where you come from, you’re always going to feel inferior,” Peter Harold told Timmers a few months after the left-hander had missed out on a spot in the Gauteng Lions u15 squad.
The statement was part of conversation that changed Timmers’ life.
“Something that has stuck with me from all those years ago was my coach telling me that school cricket was not the most important thing in cricket. He helped me to see that there were many successful players who did not play at every level of provincial cricket,” Timmers recalled.
The chat was a turning point in Timmers’ career. The left-hander shared his goals with Harold: he wanted to make the Gauteng Lions u19 team in two years and he had plans of pursuing cricket as a career. In return, Harold drew a blueprint of how Timmers could achieve that.
He turned their sessions into a high-performance environment and started treating Timmers like a full professional. The expectation was that the teenager matched the standards. Timmers did so. He behaved as if this was his job, his career, his business.
The pair also recognised that Timmers needed more than what he got from their sessions and at Helpmekaar. So, they decided that Timmers would find a club. According to Gregory, he was adamant that he wanted to join Old Edwards CC.
This meant that each week, in addition to his academic and sporting commitments at Helpmekaar - where he was also their star hockey player, Timmers spent up to five hours commuting to training or club cricket. The trip from the West Rand to Pretoria consumed close to three hours, and spent another two-and-a-half hours to and from Old Eds CC.
Timmers made added workload and the time his parents spent playing chauffeur for him count. One of his targets with Harold was to score six centuries in competitive cricket, Timmers returned eight.
“Neil was a good players in his first couple of years, but his cricket really excelled in Grade 11 and 12,” van den Berg remembered.
To use Van den Berg’s words, it wasn’t long before he ‘started to dominate on the club scene.’ When he went for the Gauteng Lions u19 trials, Timmers stood out. He had ‘that x-factor’ quality and impossible to ignore, according to Ahmed Nawab, the Lions u19 coach.
Timmers waited. The key to playing the shot he was attempting, a combination of the reverse sweep and the scoop, was in not moving too soon, otherwise the bowler would take that as a cue to reset. So, he waited until the last moment before making a move. The ball landed in line with off-stump, Timmers went for the shot, and edged the ball.
If anyone was counting, this was Timmers’ fifth attempt at the shot. He had completely missed the ball the previous four times. This was the closest he had come to executing the shot. There was no frustration on Timmers’ face as he retrieved the ball. It was wedged between the stumps and the net.
In Worstward Ho, Samuel Beckett wrote, ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ Timmers has never read the English writer’s parody of Westward Ho!, but lives each word of the mantra.
“Training is not meant to be perfect. Our approach is that a single mistake is an opportunity to learn and 20 mistakes are 20 lessons,” Peter Harold shared.
Timmers took guard. He gave Harold a thumbs up to signal that he was ready to try again. He was one stroke away from getting all the elements of the shot right. It also mirrored where he was in his cricket career, he was one step away from achieving his ambition of turning professional. The Betway SA20 contract with the Joburg Super Kings helps a lot in that regard.