The Don Is Here
Everyone is a don until the real don walks into the room. Donovan Ferreira walked out to bat and shot the lights out
Hi, my name is CS Chiwanza, and I am addicted to sharing information on Donovan Ferreira. It has been zero days since my last mention of it. I spoke about him on national TV a few hours ago and am now I am writing about it. Earlier this year, I wrote 3,000 words on him in a piece titled Chasing the Dream.
Donovan Ferreira was not supposed to do that.
When distilled to its most basic form, professional sport is a Darwinian crucible. The strongest survive. You eat or get eaten. You dominate or get dominated. You do it or you don’t. When you are handed an opportunity, it falls on you to show that you can swim with the sharks, play with the big boys and all the other clichés. The rewards are huge if you make the best out of the opportunity.
Ferreira understood that part. After school, he trained with Northerns for three years, patiently waiting for an opportunity to prove his worth. The opportunity came when a teammate split his webbing in a three-day game, and Ferreira was picked for a one-day game. “I scored like 60 runs of like 30 balls against Easterns,” says Ferreira.
The half-century earned him a contract, but not with Titans. He was surplus requirements. Richard das Neves signed him to Easterns. Ferreira shot the lights out and was the leading run-scorer for Easterns in his first season. Despite making the best of his opportunities, Ferreira found himself jilted, on the curb. His career was turning out into a perfect study on the unfairness of sport; sometimes you might not get enough opportunities to show that you can succeed.
That’s the unfair part of the crucible, the part that is designed to limit how far you can go regardless of your talent or work ethic. At 23, Ferreira was watching a lifelong dream go down the sewer. When he was six, Ferreira announced to his mother that he wanted to be a professional cricketer.
This newsletter is completely reader-supported. If you’re willing and able, please consider supporting it in one of two ways, leaving a tip or becoming a Patreon. Thank you so much for your time and investment!
In his matric year, Ferreira picked cricket over hockey. He was one of Pretoria Boys’ High’s star hockey players and played provincial hockey. After he graduated from university, he told his mother he was pursuing the dream of playing professional cricket. Four years later, he didn’t have a contract at either pro or semi-pro level. Put simply, he was unemployed.
After being jettisoned by Easterns in 2021, went job hunting. An individual can only rise so many times after being tackled. At some point, it feels better to just lie there and accept the hand fate has dealt you. “I still remember sitting at my one friend's house and saying I'm done. Like, I can't deal with this anymore. The rollercoaster life I was living because of cricket was not sustainable,” says Ferreira.
He didn’t know what type of job he wanted or was best for him, he just knew that needed something he could do for money. After exhausting all avenues he could think of with no positive result, Ferreira offered to work for IXU for free. His logic was that if they gave him a chance, he would prove himself invaluable. If he had learned one thing from all the disappointments he had faced, it was that opportunity is fleeting and it’s your responsibility to be of use to somebody.
Heinrich Rix and his mother, Anita, felt he wasn’t done with the game yet. But, they couldn’t sway him to keep going. 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. “I thought cricket was not working out and to force things now might not be beneficial for me,” says Ferreira.
Given the way things had gone, Ferreira was not meant to make his Titans debut a few months later. But he did, after a bit of manoeuvring. He ignored Mandla Mashimbyi’s calls, but Mashimbyi was relentless. He called until Ferreira picked up the phone. The Titans wanted him to take part in the CSA T20 Challenge on a pay-for-play basis. Ferreira told Jacques Faul to ask Heinrich Rix, the founder and CEO of IXU, for permission for Ferreira to take time away from work. Rix was more than happy to give Ferreira days off.
As if to underscore the fact that Ferreira wasn’t supposed to be there, the Titans couldn’t find a helmet for him. He had to cover his helmet, which was the wrong colour, with a piece of cloth from a Titans match shirt. It was a different shade of blue to the rest of the team's helmets. He still stood out. Throughout the tournament, he looked like the new kid at a school whose parents accidentally bought the wrong shade of uniform.
Ferreira also stood out with the bat. The man who sold gear for a living set the tournament alight with 152 runs in five innings at an average of 76 and a strike rate of 153.53 in the tournament. The Don had arrived.
When he walked away from cricket, Ferreira felt he had given the game everything and it had kicked him in the crotch in reply. If you had asked him in June 2021, where he saw himself by the time he turned 25, his response would have been along the lines of rising in the corporate world. At 23, Ferreira was an IXU sales rep. He went to schools selling cricket gear. He also waited hand and foot on Faf du Plessis and Heinrich Klaasen. “When they needed gloves or something, I was the one they called,” says Ferreira.
When he was 16, Ferreira was promoted up the order because his team needed a sacrificial lamb to face the wrath of Kagiso Rabada. No one wanted to face Rabada. Everyone knew Rabada but no one knew what to do when facing him. ‘Good luck,’ was the best piece of advice he got as he walked out to bat. With eyes tightly shut, Ferreira swung as hard as he could to the first Rabada delivery he faced. He middled it for a big six.
Against Australia, Ferreira kept his eyes open and danced down the track to smack the second ball he faced over long-off for a six to get off the mark in international cricket. But, just as he was getting his eye in, South Africa lost two wickets in four balls - that was six balls after Ferreira arrived at the crease.
“Batting in that finisher role is difficult. You can never kind of plan or pre-plan your game plan beforehand because the situation might change. Like, you might come in with the collapse, then there's pressure because you are the last recognized batter and then you're going to allrounders or your bowlers. Your role is to come in and continue with the right pressure. So I think for me, in the game, you need to stay present,” says Ferreira.
And that’s what he did. After the clatter of wickets, Ferreira stayed in the present and batted like he owned the real estate between the stumps. When Rob Walter spoke of Ferreira’s selection, he said Ferreira was picked for his boundary-clearing ability. Ferreira cleared the boundary six times, five sixes and a single four, on his way to a 21-ball 48. He almost singlehandedly powered South Africa to a score of 200.
Ferreira’s 48 was the second-highest individual score by a South African batter in the T20 series. His strike rate of 228 was the highest by a South African batter. He wasn’t supposed to do that, but he did because he is Donovan Ferreira, the Don.
For the full Donovan Ferreira story:
If you found this interesting, please share it:
You can support Stumped! by leaving a tip:
Thanks for reading. Until next time… - CS