There is a certain symmetry in cricket that never ceases to amaze me. Some might call it fate, or even fate. Many will be hoping that on a warm Paarl afternoon in December, Faye Tunnicliffe’s long-awaited date with her cricketing destination became a reality.
The scorebook will record her Player of the Match performance for the Proteas against Ireland as one that included seven fours, six twos and eleven singles. This will show that she scored 51 runs in 42 balls at a strike rate of 121.4. Before being dismissed on the first ball of the 14th over, she shared partnerships of 78 off 56 balls with Suné Luus and 38 off 23 balls with captain Laura Wolvaardt.
The story behind the statistics is more telling. When she slid down the fifth ball of Aimee Maguire’s second ball to long for a single, the wait for cricket’s redemption was over. Her ‘scrappy’ innings, as she described it, had reached a crucial milestone. With a bat in front of the home crowd and an applauding dugout, it seems fitting that this moment would come in the province where her journey began, in front of family and friends.
16-year-old Somerset College student Faye made her senior cricket debut for Boland Women at the end of the 2014/15 season, at the Irene Villagers Cricket Ground outside Pretoria, in a 50-over match against a Northerns Women’s team. Her Proteas opening partner, Suné, already an international player, was in the opposition that day.
There was another player on the field on March 7, 2015, for whom December 7 in Boland Park is important. Stacey Lackay was one of Faye’s teammates on the trip north. How fitting it is for her to make her international on-field umpiring debut in South Africa on this important day.
Faye’s Proteas path has not been easy. Selected for South Africa as a wicketkeeper/batsman as a 19-year-old while still playing for Boland, she made her debut in the Caribbean against the West Indies in a warm-up series for the 2018 T20 Cricket World Cup. The WI tour and World Cup would prove to be a tough test for the young Faye. She kept wicket in 3 of the 5 matches she played, with mixed batting results.
Her promise was clear and Faye was rewarded with a call-up to the national team for the T20 and ODI series against Sri Lanka in February 2019. She kept the order, keeping to all six matches in Lizelle Lee’s absence, but could only bat in four of the six matches and reached double figures only once. She was subsequently left out of the team for the incoming tour of Pakistan later that year.
After moving to Western Province in the 2019/20 season, Faye once again showed her class, with a number of excellent performances at T20 level, including her maiden century in the Women’s Super League, held in Irene. Her 106* off 62 balls was a huge breakthrough in the innings, her first score above 50 in the format. Despite no domestic cricket in the 2020/21 Covid season, her form saw her called up to the Proteas in two T20Is in early 2021, one against Sri Lanka and one against India.
Two quiet seasons would follow, but Faye’s work ethic and determination could not be dulled. Failure to make the Proteas squad for the home T20 tournament in early 2023 would have left many upstart Proteas deflated, but not Faye. She worked even harder and enjoyed a stellar 2023/24 season, scoring 341 runs at 48.71, including her second T20 century, 108* against the Titans Women at SuperSport Park. Combined with a good start to the 2024/25 season, the reward was a call-up to the England series in November 2024. It was a tough tour, and not having been in the Proteas set-up for three years seemed to say something about Faye’s performance on the field. Her highest reward was 22 in a slow 28 balls, and her confidence at the highest level seemed low.
A year later, Faye has continued to set Western Province records at the provincial level. This season her speaking skills have improved, and in both List A cricket, where she recorded her and WP’s highest score of 138* against North-West in Potchefstroom, and in T20 cricket, where she scored 110* against the Titans at Newlands, she has dominated the bowling attacks. Her demolition of the last over of the Titans’ Gabriella Sequeira for 27 (4 sixes) is a testament to her destructive ability, and probably the best strokeplay ever seen in women’s domestic cricket on the ground.
The second highest ever run-scorer in domestic T20 cricket after Tazmin Brits, Faye’s pedigree is clear. Because she has largely left the goalkeeper gloves behind, her contribution on the field is excellent. Sharp, fast over the ground and stable under a high ball: it all speaks of a cricketer who has reinvented himself. All this good work without reward seemed to be the theme. Friday’s Newlands 1 off 4 balls was not the ideal start to the series. Could Sunday’s meeting at Boland Park be a new opportunity?
Fortunately it was.
Tunnicliffe looked nervous and struggled to get rid of both Orla Prendergast and Alana Dalzell. On five of nine deliveries, Tunnicliffe’s desperate charge to a wide Dalzell delivery went straight into the air. Boland Park held their collective breath, Laura Delany landed under a regulation catch at the back point and laid him down. The next ball was wide and full, cheerfully accepted and sent to the boundary pads for four. Now that they’re on the road, jingling nerves are a thing of the past, and her home crowd, on the ground where it all started, saluted with every run.
December 9, 2025 is Faye’s 27th birthday. She will celebrate by being part of a Proteas team that will walk out to sing the national anthem at Willowmoore Park in Benoni. Seven years after Bridgetown, Barbados, and after just fourteen T20I and three ODI caps, could a sloppy milestone on a picture-perfect Paarl afternoon in December be the symmetry needed to revive Faye’s international career? I certainly hope so.
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