Alec Loveland (UV Nash) took three wickets in his first 1st team cricket match for St John’s. That was back in the third term of 2022, and he was only in Lower IV at the time.
One of his wickets was off his 1st ball, and you might have excused him if he thought this 1st team cricket stuff was going to be easy, but four years later, we know he’s not that way. “I guess the coaches wanted to blood me in the last games of that year,” he says, “if anything, that early success motivated me to work hard and to be ready if I got another chance.”
But progress wasn’t immediate. He was not selected at the beginning of Upper IV, but he made the side later in the year and has been a fixture ever since. And on Thursday, at the St David’s Fasken Time Cricket Festival, he got his 100th cap – and he went one better than in that opening game, taking four wickets against Nelspruit on the 1st day.
Looking back, he sees how much he has grown as a player and a person. "I was a bowler back then,” he says, “but I like to think that I’ve developed into an all-rounder since then.” He is an all-rounder in every sense. He has played 1st team hockey for the last two years and is, in his words, “an all-right student”, expecting several distinctions at the end of the year.
On the cricket front, the next step, he hopes, will be provincial selection in December. He has made provincial squads and teams at every level through the junior age groups.
Alex is the 13th player to play for the 1st team 100 times or more since records have been kept.
The list of centurions is:
139 – B Dial (2010 – 2013)
135 – L Masselli (2011-2015)
123 – W Coulentianos (2010-2013)
115 – C Esterhuizen (2016-2019)
108 – D Conway (2006-2009)
108 – M Strydom (2010-2014)
106 – M Blair (2014-2017)
105 – C Smith (2013-2016)
102 – C McKerr (2012-2015)
102 – J Lees (2016-2019)
102 – N Halsted-Cleak (2016-2019)
101 – Joe McRobert (2022-2024)
Now, Alec Loveland’s name joins this distinguished list, a fitting recognition of 100 games of service to St John’s cricket.
