North Vancouver’s Tiaan Pretorius is on his way to Toronto where he’ll be gunning for a spot with the rest of Team Canada in the 2018 U19 Cricket World Cup.
The 16-year-old, who just finished up Grade 10 at Handsworth Secondary where he played running back for the senior football team, is the youngest player on the national U19 cricket team, a squad that will be playing against Bermuda and the United States with one World Cup berth on the line.
So how did a football-playing kid from noted non-cricket-playing North Vancouver end up as one of the best young cricket bowlers in North America? It’s kind of an interesting story. A hint can be found in the last name Pretorius, a handle that suggests strong connections to South Africa. And Tiaan Pretorius was, in fact, born in Pretoria, South Africa, a city named after its founder Marthinus Wessel Pretorius, a distant relative of Tiaan’s who was also the first president of the South African Republic, an independent and internationally recognized country from 1852 to 1902.
Several of Tiaan’s relatives played high-level rugby in South Africa but he was always drawn to the cricket bat.
“None of my family really played cricket, we were more of a rugby family,” he says. “But at a young age, probably around four or five, I just picked up a cricket bat and started playing. I just really loved the sport and I kept on playing.”
By Grade 2 he was playing on a team with kids in Grade 6. His family moved here, however, when he was 12 years old, causing some stress for the budding cricket star.
“At first I was nervous, I didn’t think I was going to have any friends. It was a new country, everything was new,” he says.
He soon started to make a name for himself at the West Vancouver Cricket Club, although it wasn’t a smashing success right from the start. The team was near the bottom of the second division of the British Columbia Mainland Cricket League when he first started playing.
“I started out playing for the worst team in the league,” he says. He also had to navigate an interesting cultural mix amongst players predominantly of Indian or Pakistani heritage. That has involved picking up bits and pieces of new languages, including Hindi and Tamil.
“I’m the only white guy there,” he says with a laugh, adding that the other players in the club have made him feel very welcome. “They don’t see me as a different person. They accept me as one of them – that’s what I really like about this club.”
The team is winning now too – this season they are in first place in the Premier Division.
“Cricket is getting bigger every year,” he says. “Every year there are new guys. But I’m still the youngest.”
He’s good too. He’s the only 16-year-old on the U19 national team, starring as an all-rounder who bowls and bats. As a spin bowler – as opposed to the faster speed “pace bowlers” – he throws the ball typically about 90-100 kilometres per hour and tries to get batters out with tricky spins. He’s also hardened his hands for the catching part of the game – cricketers famously don’t wear gloves to play defence except for the wicket-keeper. That’s one of the most obvious differences between cricket and baseball.
“A cricket ball is way harder,” says Pretorius. “I’ve broken most of my fingers. Now my fingers are kind of used to it, so I don’t break my fingers anymore.”
The World Cup qualifier runs July 17-25 in Toronto, and Canada will be favoured – they’ve won the tournament five times, including the last two, compared to two wins for the United States and one for Bermuda.
It won’t be the first time Pretorius has competed for Canada. He suited up for the national U17 team in a series against the United States and Bermuda last year, with Canada winning all four of its matches quite handily.
“It was really just an honour to play for my country,” he says. “The first game I was really nervous, but all the support I got from the staff and players helped me through a lot of the nerves and stuff.”
Victory in Toronto this month would mean a World Cup berth for Canada.
“It would be a dream come true,” said Pretorius. “That’s something I’ve been wanting to do since I was really small.”
