Brenden Fourie

After completing my matric at Selborne College in 1987, I decided to return for a Post-Matric and it was during the latter part of this year that I was fortunate to be selected for Border. It was also at this time that I was selected to play for the Impalas, a composite team made up of players from Border, Boland and Griqualand West, in the Benson & Hedges Day/Night Series.  

My debut for the Impalas was against Natal in Durban and I was lucky to get a hat-trick. I say lucky because the hat-trick ball was very wide down the legside but Chris Lister-James managed to get a bat on it and Emmerson Trotman completed a great diving catch.  

Two days later, I played for Border against Eastern Province at St George’s Park in a Nissan Shield game. I ended up with figures of 8-0-73-0, courtesy of Kenny McKewan and Mark Rushmere who hit me to all parts of St George’s. To top off my day, I also dropped Kenny on the Long-on boundary and a photo of me dropping the catch made the Sports’ page of Die Burger on Monday! I went from hero to zero in two days but I learnt a valuable lesson – you are only as good as your next performance! 

There were a number of memorable moments during my career but one that stands out was Border coming from behind to, unexpectedly, beat Transvaal ‘B’ in the 1988/89 Final of the Castle Bowl Competition. With Transvaal only needing 156 runs to win on the final day, Alan Kourie, the Transvaal manager, was so sure that they would win that he went and bought some champagne at lunchtime on the last day. Unfortunately for them, they ended up losing their last 6 wickets for about 10 runs and we won the game by 16 runs. Our manager promptly went into their changing room and brought the champagne over to ours! 

I was fortunate enough to spend eight enjoyable seasons playing cricket in England but it was while working as a Development Officer for the Northamptonshire Cricket Board in 2003 that I met my wife Emma who was teaching at one of the schools I was working in. Emma moved to ‘Slummies’ in 2006 and we married in 2008. In 2020, we made the very difficult decision to relocate to the UK with our two daughters, Amy and Sarah. After retiring from cricket in 2013, I decided to make a return to the crease in 2021, playing Over-50s cricket. It has been fantastic being back on the park again, but the mind and body are definitely not in sync anymore!