Young girl from Boitirelo excels on the mini cricket landscape

She is only ten years old but Karabo Lemphane from Boitirelo Primary School loves cricket and is already making a name for herself in the North West Province as a player to watch.
When Cricket South Africa established their hub development programme, they identified Boitirelo Primary as a feeder school. In 2015, they spotted Karabo and saw her obvious talent.
She loves the game so much that, even though she has moved on to hard ball cricket and plays under-19 and under-13 hard ball cricket at her hub, she still joins in with the girls and boys of her age to play KFC Mini-Cricket.
At the recent North West KFC Mini-Cricket Provincial Festival, the Lions’ players, Craig Alexander and Beuran Hendricks, noticed her talent and were happy to hear that the North West Cricket Union had already identified her and she was part of their hub system.
‘She is an outstanding player and it is fantastic to see how much she enjoys her cricket,’ said Alexander. If I could give her a little piece of advice, it would be for her to have fun and continue playing with so much enthusiasm. Let’s see how far she goes.’
The hub coach, Seiso Tau focuses on developing talented girls from KFC Mini-Cricket upwards and is working with Karabo. He believes she is good enough to play in the girls under-13 provincial week but she is still only 10 and he would rather give a girl who is already 13 the chance to play instead.
‘Karabo will have another three opportunities to play,’ he said. ‘KFC Mini-Cricket is the first step in Karabo’s progress towards possibly playing for the Proteas Women’s side one day. However, she needs to enjoy herself too and have as much fun as possible playing the game.’
Seiso said she is so passionate about the game that they just encourage her to do whatever she feels she needs to learn more about the game. ‘She is very determined and disciplined and works harder than the other kids,’ he said.
Seiso recently gave her a week off after she had played a match for the under-19s and had been to two practices in the week. ‘I did not want her to burn out but, the next day, she was back at practice.
‘I spoke to her mother about it and she said Karabo loves cricket so much that she insisted on going and no one could stop her,’ he said.
Seiso insists that education always comes first and he is glad that her mother, father and stepfather are very supportive of her, in the classroom and at school.
Karabo mainly plays against other hubs but she also plays in the schools’ league with her hub. The under-13 and under-19 teams she plays for have made the provincial semi-finals.
The coaches have asked her to concentrate on only one league and she has chosen the under-13s because she says they need her help. The under-19s are good enough without her, she said.
In the meantime, Karabo has also become a scorer and scores on a computer in the men’s premier league. No one taught her to score, she just watched the scorers and asked questions and, before they knew it, she had taught herself. She was recently chosen to be one of the scorers.
Karabo’s parents have been amazing. Her mother talks to Seiso on a daily basis to check on her progress and to make sure she is still having fun. Her father comes to practices to watch her play and continually encourages her.