Johmari Logtenberg

Every so often a special talent emerges in sport who makes everyone sit up and take notice. Johmari Logtenberg is certainly in that bracket and everyone knew it from very early on. In her debut international she struck 74 in the drawn Test against England, when she was just 14. She followed that up by hitting scores of 61, 67 and 76 in her first eight ODIs. Her innings of 67 from 99 balls in February 2004 was the highlight of these as South Africa beat England in the opening match of their home series, by just one wicket.

She started playing aged seven, and was representing the Natal under-13 side when she was 12, also captaining the girls under-19s at the same time. That same year she made two appearances for the Natal first team, where despite her main skills being with the bat she took 3/14, and against Free State she scored an impressive 33 before being run out. She is originally from Pretoria and at 11 was playing for the Gauteng Under-19 womens team.

While the 2003 World Cup was as disappointing for her as it was for the rest of the team, averaging just 16.33 in the six matches, her golden year came in 2006 when she was the South African Woman Player of the Year. She became the first woman to score 1000 runs in the provincial league, three days before her seventeenth birthday, at the time having scored 1057 runs in 19 innings at the phenomenal average of 176.16. Her combined average for 2005/06, due to her lack of dismissals, was a mind-boggling 422.50.

This form was transported into the international arena in 2007 when she scored her first ODI century, hitting 103 not out against Pakistan in January. She bettered this in the following series against the Netherlands when she scored a sumptuous 153 not out from 160 balls, a record score by a South African woman, and the sixth highest of all time. She then took 2 for 1 in four balls to complete the victory. However, at just 18 she decided to quit cricket ahead of the 2009 World Cup to concentrate on other sporting interests.
Alan Curr September 2007