St Andrew’s School is a dark horse at The Final Showdown
In recent decades, the St Andrew’s School 1st XI has made its mark on the national stage, taking on many of the best teams from KwaZulu-Natal, the Western Cape, Eastern Cape, and Gauteng.
They play with grit and, in the Free State, they’ve had the number of the redoubtable Grey College for some time now, including beating their local rivals on the last three occasions they have met across all competitions.
Much like last year, Saints won both the Free State and Central Region titles of the Switch Schools SA20 competition.
In last year’s Final Showdown, while they didn’t achieve the results they were chasing, they received the Spirit of the Week Award for the manner in which they played the game.
This year, they’re determined to improve on their 2025 showing, with the national title being a tasty carrot dangling in front of them.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet noted that one needs three key ingredients to achieve a goal: “Sith I have cause (reason) and will (desire) and means (resources) to do it.”
The Saints’ cause and will are clear. Of course, they want to enhance their prosperous cricketing legacy.
Inside their Lindsay Tuckett High Performance Centre, one of the best indoor cricket facilities in the country, hangs a banner. It celebrates St Andrew’s winning a national T20 title in 2018, in the forerunner of the Switch Schools SA20, the Coca-Cola T20.
That team, captained by Knights‘ wicketkeeper-batsman, Garnett Tarr, and featuring Proteas’ fast bowler, Gerald Coetzee, has set the standard to which Saints’ teams aspire. That banner serves to remind the 2026 side of the stature of the goal that they’re pursuing.
The current squad is talented and features two matric pupils, hard-hitting batsman FG Botha and leg-spinner Nikhil Sukraj, who were members of the Free State u19 Khaya Majola Squad in 2025.
However, St Andrew’s campaign won’t rest on their shoulders alone. The team is laden with all-rounders – including Heindré Serfontein, Jonathan Hickley, and Erhard Bahrends – who are capable of delivering match-winning contributions with both bat and ball.
With it now being the Year of the Horse, according to the Chinese New Year, and Paarl Boys’ High having knocked out last year’s national winners, Bishops, in the second phase, 2026 could be the year of the dark horse, with one of the respected, yet unfavoured contenders going all the way to national title glory. St Andrew’s School dearly wants to fill that position.
