IN BLOOM

Training was never on the cards for Zane Webster. Now, the UWC alumnus leads strength and conditioning for the Proteas’ women’s cricket team

By Zaahier Adams | Photography: Cricket SA

When the Proteas’ women’s cricket team returned to the international arena in January after almost a year spent on the sidelines, the focus was not just on results. Everyone wanted to evaluate the fitness of the players after they were totally inactive for 143 days due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Unlike their male counterparts, the women’s team faced altogether different challenges during the lockdown period. Even as the restrictions were lifted and outdoor physical activity was allowed again, the majority of the women’s team still did not have access to facilities where they could train. This created a unique working environment for Zane Webster, the Proteas’ strength and conditioning trainer and University of the Western Cape (UWC) alumnus.

Webster, who graduated in 2018 with a Masters degree in Sport Recreation and Exercise Science, had begun his national duty in August 2020, replacing Russell Clarke. This placed him in a complex situation where he had not even met the players that he was now supposed to keep in peak physical condition under the most unique circumstances.

“Yeah... it was interesting, to say the least,” Webster says from the Cricket South Africa High Performance Centre in Pretoria, where he is busy preparing the Proteas for a proposed tour of the West Indies. “I spent hours on Zoom calls, introducing myself to each and every player. My way of working is that I first try understanding and building a relationship with the individual before putting any plans in place. During the lockdown, that was really difficult but we worked over Zoom and I managed to get some sort of an understanding.

“Fortunately, Russell provided the girls with home-training programmes during the hard lockdown to maintain a base level of physical fitness but I needed to assess how they had fared following it because it is harder to train alone for some than others.”

And judging by the Proteas’ performances since January, Webster has certainly achieved his goals. Even without the leadership core of captain

Dane van Niekerk and deputy Chloe-Lesleigh Tryon, the national women’s team have taken their game to a new level. Pakistan were overwhelmed with a 3-0 victory at home in the One Day Internationals (ODIs) and 2-1 in the T20s before the historic trip to India where the South African team swept aside their hosts with 4-1 in the ODIs and claimed the T20I series with a final score of 2-1.

The success was also largely attributed to the Proteas’ superior fitness to their subcontinent rivals. Webster can certainly take plenty of pride from the fact that it was his sweat, along with the rest of the Proteas’ support staff, during the preparation camps leading up to those series, that provided the edge.

And he is definitely no stranger to hard work. The former Mitchells Plain resident has been faced with adversity throughout his career. He did not have the luxury of attending one of the leafy schools in the southern suburbs, which meant his talent as a young cricketer almost went amiss. He also nearly missed out on being selected for the Western Province Youth Cricket Association teams and, when he was eventually selected for the Western Province (WP) u17 team, the tournament was rained out without a ball being bowled in Potchefstroom.

It was only after a late call-up to the WP u19 3-Day team that things began to change for Webster. And not in the way that he could ever have imagined. At that stage, he was knee-deep in his Sports Management studies at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) when a chat with some of his younger WP u19 teammates shaped his entire future.

“I was playing in the WP u19 team and studying at CPUT when some of the guys like Mujahied Behardien and Imraan Hendricks spoke to me and said, ‘Why don’t you transfer to UWC? We’re all going there.’ So I applied for the next year and, as they say, the rest is history.”

It was at UWC that Webster came into contact with Advocate Nic Kock, UWC’s Cricket Club president and Sports Skills For Life Skills (SS4LS) executive director, and Gerhard Jordaan, UWC lecturer and a former Springboks biokineticist. “These two men, they have certainly had a major influence in my life path. I truly regard them as mentors of mine. I still wanted to be a professional cricketer when I arrived at UWC.

“It was these guys that made me understand the value of having a back-up plan. Adv Kock would always speak about the education angle and put the idea out there about becoming a teacher but I told him I didn’t want to teach.

“It was Gerhard that really opened my mind to a career in sport fitness and exercise. It was from that moment that I threw myself into it and really developed a passion for my work. I volunteered anywhere and everywhere — from the local sport clubs in my area to being a doping chaperone at the Absa Cape Epic. I just wanted to be involved in sport and see how everything in the industry worked until Adv Kock pulled me aside and challenged me to revolutionise UWC Cricket’s approach to fitness and conditioning. I eventually did my thesis on UWC Cricket Club.”

Since then it has been quite a meteoric rise for Webster, with him moving to Easterns Cricket in Benoni that led to a call-up to join the management for the SA u19 team, Cricket SA National Academy and now the Proteas’ women’s team.

“Nothing can compare to the feeling of representing your country. I spoke to Craig Govender (a fellow UWC alumnus and the Proteas’ men’s physiotherapist) the day before I stood in line for the national anthem the first time and all he told me was, ‘Soak up the entire experience for not everybody has that privilege’.

“It was a surreal moment.”