Tawanda Muyeye: a 'rare talent'

Tawanda Muyeye (Gonville 2018-20) has been feted in the press this week, appearing in BBC Sport's feature England Next Gen, which looks at players who may make the step up to international cricket in the next few years.

The Times has also profiled him, describing him as a 'rare talent', and saying:

At the Northampton County Ground in June this summer, we witnessed the first flowering of Tawanda Muyeye. The 22-year-old Kent batsman scored his maiden first-class hundred there, hitting 19 boundaries and four sixes in a 205-ball stay, many of them stroked with that combination of ease, style and grace that marks out those with a gift. He turned his first hundred into a big one, 179 runs in all.

Tawanda was born and raised in Zimbabwe but came to the UK as an asylum seeker in 2018. He followed his mother Patience, a supporter of the opposition party in Zimbabwe, the Movement for Democratic Change, and was granted refugee status due to the country's human rights violations.

Having written to the College, Tawanda was granted a scholarship and interest in his ability soon took off as he scored more than 1,000 runs for the school in 2019 and won the coveted Wisden's school cricketer of the year award in 2020. In the BBC interview, Tawanda gives credit to his College coaches Rob Ferley and James Tredwell, who he says 'were amazing', with Ferley 'always making sure I had a good balance of academics and cricket.'

He concludes: 'I don't think I would have gone down the professional cricket route if it wasn't for Eastbourne.'

As well as his appearances for Kent, Tawanda has also this week been playing for the Oval Invincibles in The Hundred.

You can read the Times interview here and the BBC Sport profile here.