Heino Kuhn honoured with benefit year at the Titans

The Titans announced last week that their stalwart batsman and wicket keeper Heino Kuhn, will celebrate his benefit year over the next 12 months.

Kuhn is a long-serving stalwart of the Titans and one of the blue chip players produced by the franchise over the past 10 years.

“This benefit year will be an appropriate acknowledgement of his sensational contribution to the Titans,” said the CEO of the franchise, Jacques Faul.

Sensational is indeed a good word to describe Kuhn’s contribution to Titans success over the past decade.

A quick overview of Kuhn’s first class-statistics will have any cricket expert asking why he has never played test cricket for South Africa. After all, he scored 8 026 runs at an average of 43.61 in his first class career.

The answer to his exclusion probably lies in South Africa’s complex sport set-up. Yes, Kuhn is definitely one of the men who had to stand back because of political policy in our sport boardrooms, because according to his form over the last decade and with his statistics as a player in mind he should have been a test cricket stalwart by now.

He was, however, fortunate enough to represent South Africa in five T20 matches, while he also toured to Zimbabwe with the Proteas but never played in one of the official limited over games.

According to Kuhn, he has not given up hope to play test cricket and after what happened to Steven Cook in the last test against England this year, he realised anything is still possible.

This former pupil of Afrikaanse Hoër Seunskool in Pretoria (Affies) has just extended his contract with the Titans for another two years. He still dreams about that call from the national selectors. After his performance in this year’s local Sunfoil series, he should be first in line if the national selectors are looking for a specialist batsman to call up for national service soon.

With three games left in the Sunfoil series this season, Kuhn has a good chance to overtake the 1 000 run mark in one season. Before the Titans third last game against the Warriors started last week, he has already scored 854 runs at an average of 71.61 in 14 innings this year.

During the breakfast where his benefit year was announced last week, Kuhn told guests he plans four major events to celebrate this honour. These include a golf day, a fashion show with a cricket-twist and a gospel concert at SuperSport Park. He also intends to donate a part of his earnings from these events to various charities.