–Subhayan Chakraborty
What does sport teach us? It equips us to fight back from the lowest of lows, and turn around the gravest of situations to script sweet fairytales. With a spectacular player-of-the-match performance against England in the semi-final of the Women’s T20 World Cup, where she scored 68 off 55 balls before taking four catches – including a potential catch of the tournament, a one-handed stunner to dismiss Alice Capsey for a duck – Tazmin Brits, the South African opener, has scripted one such fairytale.
“I try not to get too emotional but yeah, today was very very special for me,” said Brits in the post-match press conference on Friday.
After being a gold medalist in javelin throw at the 2007 World Youth Championship, Brits was all set to feature in the 2012 London Olympics. However, fate had a different script written for her.
Brits was celebrating her qualification for the Games, when the life-threatening car crash happened in Potchefstroom, resulting in broken pelvis and hip and a punctured bladder which requires multiple surgeries.
After being bed-ridden for a couple of months, Brits pulled herself up. While Brits had played domestic cricket way before the car accident, she returned to cricket after recovering from the broken bones and mental trauma in a bid to revive her sporting career. Yes, in between, she had lost the will to live, as revealed by Brits on multiple occasions, but she was determined to turn her fate around.
In 2018, Brits made her maiden appearance for South Africa against Bangladesh. A gold medalist at the Youth Olympics, Brits has the Olympic rings tattooed on her right bicep. While she regards that achievement as “top”, Brits has already planned a Proteas badge beside the Rings tattoo if South Africa end up pulling off one of the biggest upsets against Australia in the highly-anticipated final on Sunday.
“It’s already signed since I don’t do javelin anymore but yeah, I won world champs at a younger age so that’s always been the top, you know, top shelf,” said Brits. “But if we can win a final, yeah, I think it’ll actually beat that – I might have to put the Proteas badge next to this at the end of the day.
“God puts us on paths and ways to go, so I think he changed my path. I might be an inspiration to many young girls or whatever the case would be, or helping other people not necessarily in cricket. I always try to remain humble and say I want to be a human first before my cricket, so I think that maybe God just gave me the lines to change my direction and help people out,” added Brits, who contemplated retiring from the sport last year.
“I like to always tell myself not to retire, because when it gets a bit hard a person tends to think that’s the easy way out,” said Brits. “I am 32 at the moment. And I think maybe golf will be a bit of a better job to do. I don’t know, I just went back to the drawing board. I mean, it’s rather late than never.”
After a quiet start to the T20 World Cup, Brits has turned around her fortunes once again with back-to-back half-centuries. Now the leading run-scorer for South Africa in the tournament with 176 runs at an average of 44, all eyes will be on the Proteas’ opener when she hit the field to write another golden page in the history of South African cricket, against arguably an all-time-great Australian side at the Newlands Cricket Ground in Cape Town.