Following in the footsteps of the greats

Roelofsen has joined a long list of players from the school that have represented South Africa at U19 level when he toured with the South African team to England for two Test matches and five One-Day Internationals.

In the first Test played at Cambridge University, Roelofsen scored 149 in a high scoring drawn opening match.

“I do not remember too much about it, it was a fairy tale really, especially as it was my debut,” recalled Roelofsen.

“I went in with the score on 90/3 and knew that we could not afford to lose another wicket quickly. I joined Ryan Rickerton who had opened, and we started slowly which was uncharacteristic for us. We took the score to about 190 before Ryan was out, and I batted through to the close of play finishing on 96.”

He said when he arrived at the ground the next morning, and saw his name on the scoreboard on 96, he realised what he had done the day before. “I got to my 100 quickly, and then started to score more freely until the new ball was taken. The new ball tends to swing more in England so it was a case of starting again to see off the shine,” he added.

He was finally out on 149 trying to glide the ball to third man while trying to protect the tail end batsman.

Roelofsen said he thought that man-for-man, the South African team had better skills than the English, but the English managed to put the three elements of the game together better in the One-Day Internationals.

“Perhaps we were not used to playing in big stadiums as we played the One-Day Internationals on either Test grounds or county grounds. The last match was even more nerve racking as it was a day/night game and it was televised.”

Roelofsen has now set his sights on playing in the Coca Cola week in December and hopefully from that, gain his second South African schools cap.

The KES pupil looks set to join an already long and distinguished list of players from the school and Old Eds who have gone on to reach greater heights in the game.