Khaya was school cricket's Craven

I’ve been at just about every Khaya Majola cricket week (under its present and former names) since 1989, as I have to all the rugby Craven Weeks in that time.

One of the things about the Craven Week, initially anyway, was that the spirit of Danie Craven loomed large around the place and his influence was seen in the way things were done, particularly when it came to the really important things – behaviour, sportsmanship and valuing how you play the game above the winning of it.

In 2001 the Coca-Cola Week was renamed the Khaya Majola Week, following Khaya Majola’s death the year before. Khaya’s history as a cricketer in the pre-unity days is well documented in the tournament brochure that is produced each year. He went on to play an important role in cricket’s unification process that began in 1991 and eventually he and Ali Bacher were the architects of a national development programme for the United Cricket Board of South Africa (UCB), the new national federation. He later became the Director of Development and then the Director of Amateur Cricket at the UCB.

During that time he became involved in the, then, Coca-Cola cricket week as a selector and generally a champion and advocate for the players in the development programme who were beginning to appear in the various teams.

Morgan Pillay, the long-serving tournament director of the week, was very close to Khaya and he gives a lot of credit for the way the tournament has evolved into what it is now to him. “He played a vital role in bringing everyone together, and he did it through the example he set and through the force of his personality,” he said.

“His vision for cricket was clear and he had the ability to get people to buy into it. His dream, he told us, was to see the day when a black South Africa bowler took five wickets in a Test match. Sadly, he died just three months before Makhaya Ntini’s 6/66 against New Zealand in Bloemfontein in November 2000 but I like to think he was smiling down on it.”

Most importantly, Khaya was as adamant that the right things happen on and around the field and, by all accounts, he deserves as much credit for the way things are run at the Khaya Majola Week as Danie Craven gets for the Craven Week.

“You should remember,” Pillay said, “that he was channelling talented black players into the week and many of them had no exposure to this level of cricket before. They never grew up with the etiquette and the traditions of the game and they had to be initiated into them. Khaya oversaw that process and he insisted on their compliance with it.

“That’s evident now. We rarely have incidents at the week and very few fingers are pointed, Khaya would approve.”

So, if anyone asks you who Khaya Majola was, tell them he was to school cricket what Danie Craven was to school rugby. He has left deep footprints around here.