Mignon Du Preez
By: Polly Starkie
Tags: The Hundred, South Africa, Womens Cricket, Mignon Du Preez, Manchester Originals

Mignon or Minx as she is also known is the smiliest cricketer I’ve ever met! She oozes joy and is just the loveliest person. We zoomed with Minx at the end of the Hundred to chat about the previous 4 weeks, her cricket journey and so much more. Mignon was born and raised in South Africa and has even captained her national side. This year, she signed with Manchester Originals as a strong batter.

Not knowing much about cricket for young girls in South Africa, I was eager to hear about her experience with cricket growing up.

“I actually started at the age of 4, so in South Africa, we’ve got a mini cricket program. My dad used to be a coach of a team and my brother was playing and one day, I was always just a supportive sister you know, I went to the games, watched it but I made sure that I also had a nice little white t-shirt with the mini cricket logo on and shorts and then one day, one of the boys didn’t make it to the game in time and my dad asked me if I want to step and I actually ended up being the best better for the day and I think that’s when my love started for the game”.

I wasn’t too surprised that her story was very similar, if not identical to most English players.

The outside perspective she provides is very fascinating, praising the ECB for its efforts with the women’s game.

“I think especially the ECB has put a little a lot of effort towards promoting the women’s game by having the standalone women’s opening feature. I think that really was something special and we just said throughout the competition, we’ve had big crowds in the games and we sometimes don’t even get that amount of people in at South African cricket games so for us to play a domestic tournament and in front of a sold out crowd is something really special so we’ve really enjoyed it. It’s been a fantastic tournament and I definitely think it’s gonna put women’s cricket on the map even further and like you say hopefully in the future a lot of girls will take up the sport because of watching the Hundred”.

As I have mentioned in previous articles, I openly talk about my faith and I am a Christian. Mignon is also a Christian and speaks so well about her faith. For me, she is a role model for me in how to share you faith and live it out within sport.

“I’ve been pretty fortunate that I think in South Africa where I come from, it’s a lot easier that we can just be open about our Christianity so it’s really helpful, it’s maybe not the same for everybody around the globe and we’ve been very fortunate we’ve had the support and for me I think, I’ve got a little slogan that just said that your talent is God’s gift to you and what you do with your talents is your gift back and I see cricket as an opportunity to just use my God-given talent to glorify his name and it’s almost like a method of how I can praise and worship.” I love the way she speaks about giving back to God by using the gift she has been given. Minx went on to mention that “every time I step out, I think you probably saw, that I’ll kneel down and then I just say a little prayer just to say and thank you all that you died for me, now I get to play for you so yeah that’s really special, like I said, I think for me you know when things don’t go your way it’s nice that you know you’ve got somebody else rooting for you upstairs, there’s probably more failures than success but I think knowing that whenever we play, I just got to give glory to God and that really makes it a lot easier”

Continuing on from speaking about her faith, we mentioned fellow overseas player, Jemimah Rodrigues. Jemi is also a Christian and Mignon shared about her beautiful friendship with her.

“I think a few years back at the Kia Super League, she scored that hundred and then she had a little Bible verse at the end of it and obviously I’ve played against India for quite some time but you kind of have this expectation that more of them follow other religions so when I saw that, it was kind of an opportunity for me so I sent them and said listen well I just saw you posted the scripture and then it got us talking so she actually shared a whole testimony with me and her dad’s actually a pastor so that’s a really cool story so I’m sure if you guys get in contact with her, she would probably also love to be on your show. She calls me a big sister and I call her my little sister so we’ve been in contact over WhatsApp quite a few times”. These international friendships are something that these franchise tournaments build and it’s wonderful to see this sisterhood being built all the way from India to South Africa. Minx spoke glowingly of Jemi saying “it’s easy to talk the talk but to actually walk the walk and your actions kind of show more and with her, you can just see just joy follows flows out of her and then and that’s also it’s like there’s another saying that enthusiasm is contagious and you see that with her, I think everybody wants to be around her because she’s such a lovely person so I think that’s one of the things for me”.

Ignorant to the domestic set up in South Africa, Du Preez explained how it works at the moment.

“We don’t have a professional domestic structure just yet, they are looking into creating opportunities and giving some contracts to domestic players but at the moment unfortunately we only have the 15 contracted national players and then there is an emerging team and then provincial teams and hopefully in the next year or so there’s going to be contracts for the emerging/academy players as well as some of the domestic players so unfortunately most of those girls still just play for the love of the sport and hope they can make it to play for South Africa one day”.

I’m sure that other countries, especially South Africa and India, naturally, the next step would be to introduce contracts below the national side and potentially introduce and competition to give domestic players better opportunities.

I am based in Birmingham and in the summer of 2022, the Commonwealth Games are coming to Birmingham with a brand new addition of cricket; but just women’s! South Africa will be playing in it and hopefully Mignon will be too!

“I would have to make the team first but playing in that tournament, that would be, I’ve never played in anything like the Commonwealth or something before so that would be one of the highlights of my career so hopefully I’ll keep on pushing and make sure that I can make that team and be in the Commonwealth Games next year and it’s in Birmingham”

Mignon is a wonderful person and I would chat to her for hours! If you would like to listen to the rest of the chat, there is a link below:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Z6IDBxVxXu6LkGYu2X1aZ