Shotley Bridge has pulled off a coup with the signing of strapping South African seamer, Ottneil Baartman, for their 2020 North East Premier League campaign.
The big man’s journey
Born in Oudshoorn, Baartman is a tall, strongly-built, pace bowler playing for the VKB Knights in South African’s Franchise competition.
Such was his promise, Baarman broke into the Knights set-up in September 2017, having only played 8 first-class matches previously. Since then, he has gone onto play 10 first-class matches for the Knights taking 29 wickets at 29.13 heading into the 2019/20 season.
The powerful strike-bowler can lay claim to best match figures of 14-95 (7-27 and 7-68) recorded during his fifth first-class game for SWD. He went on to take 27 wickets at 20.62 during what was his breakthrough season in 2016/17. He has since gone on to take a total of 74 wickets at 24.79 in 23 first-class games, alongside exceptional bowling averages of 18.69 and 22.50 in List A and T20, respectively.
Ottneil in full flow for the Knights.
Ottneil signs for Shotley
Baartman is clearly a player for the future who harbors national ambitions. For now, though, the South African quick will look to excel in domestic cricket this summer before embarking on his maiden UK stint with Shotley Bridge in 2020.
Speaking about the signing, Club spokesman, Lewis Hall stated the following:
“As a Club we are delighted to have signed such an experienced first-class cricketer, we are very excited to see Ottneil in the green and gold next season as we aim to get promotion from division 1.”
