It’s fair to say that one out of two people that listen to western popular music have heard David Bowie’s Heroes. I wonder how many have heard of Shania-Lee and the Zeroes?

No, they are not a music band. They all play, I grant you that. But not at music gigs. Their stage, instead, is a large ground, sometimes referred to as an oval, covered with grass and featuring strips in the centre 20.12 metre x 3.05 metre, or 22 yards by 10 feet.

Could it be cricket, I imagine some readers asking? Cricket it is.

With a name like Shania, one could be forgiven if the mind did a side-slip and raced away thinking Twain, as in Shania Twain, the country rock singer. The Canadian singer Twain after all sits currently at No 25 on the all-time list of highest certified music artists in the United States (a spot she shares with Kenny G!)

This Shania — Shania-Lee Swart — her full name, isn’t Canadian, but a women’s cricket player from Mpumalanga, what used to be Eastern Transvaal prior to 1995. And she is a rocker of sorts, as opposition bowlers will attest.

In a women’s under-19 cricket match held against Easterns in Pretoria, last December, the Easterns’ bowlers must have been cock-a-hoop as one batsperson after another came and went, nine of them failing to ‘trouble the score’, as it were. In cricket parlance, of course, we know that means that they ‘didn’t get off the mark’, or simply failed to score a run. Nine of them! And, as stats go, I think (as an Aussie citizen now) it’s fair dinkum to assume that one out of two readers will be aware that a cricket side is made up of 11 players. When nine of them ‘fail to trouble the scoreboard’, it will be equally fair to assume that the overall score isn’t going to amount to much of a grand total. Right? Wrong.

Okay, let’s come at it from another angle. When nine of Mpumalanga’s batswomen ‘fail to get off the mark’, it’s fair to assume that Easterns didn’t spend too long at the cricket ground, but romped home winners? Right? Wrong again.

If one is a betting person this would have been the match to put some money on. To watch this long procession of batswomen come and go and yet stay steadfast to your betting instincts and say, ‘Mpumalanga’s going to win, I can feel it in my bones’. Right? Absolutely! Mpumalanga managed not only to win but to do so by a grand margin of 42 runs! Impossible, I hear some cricket-driven readers mutter. Could never happen. If it really did, Easterns’ batswomen must have somehow managed to come up with more players ‘failing to trouble the scorecard’. Right? Wrong.

Which is where the story of Shania-Lee Swart takes centre stage. This scorecard is one for cutting and pasting (in a memory book) for all time because cricket scorecards such as this come once in several generations, if ever. In a team of 11 players, nine of whom have failed to score, she (Shania-Lee) alone managed to score 160 runs! (The other nine runs from the team’s final score of 169, were contributed by extras — five wides, three no balls and a leg bye). Eighteen fours and twelve sixes!

All this, while the other teammates were desperately trying to get bat to meet ball; and when it did, not edging, or propping up gentle catches. If that’s not a breathtaking one-sided performance in a game that demands team work, I don’t know what else comes close. It is also proof that in any sphere of life where team dynamics are imperative, there is room for individuality and individuals such as Shania-Lee who can form part of a collective but still stand out when called to perform, are said to possess the X Factor. As for The Zeroes, that’s a truly unfortunate place to be in a performance as grand as Shania-Lee’s.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.