Zimbabwe was once famous for its schools. There’s a particularly prestigious boarding school in Esigodini, 55 kilometers southeast of Bulawayo near the old Bushtick Mine, called Falcon College. It was founded in 1954, and finds its motto in the work of the Roman poet Virgil: Sic itur ad astra, meaning literally “thus one goes to the stars”, and more generally “such is the way to immortality.”

In 1990, a student named Trevor Madondo arrived at Falcon College. During his time there he was to grow an unparalleled reputation as the next big thing in Zimbabwean cricket. In a strange way, Trevor’s short life, and his lasting impact, have come to embody the school’s maxim.

Or perhaps it’s not that strange at all. There’s an old game called sortes vergilianae. The gist is that it’s a sort of bibliomancy, or divination, by way of Virgil’s poems. Open any page of the Aeneid at random, pick a passage, and you’ll learn your fate. This was the method by which, legend has it, Hadrian’s ascent to the Roman emperorship was foretold, while King Charles 1 is said to have happened upon a passage that predicted his own execution by beheading. In the works of Dante, Virgil is the author’s guide to the underworld. In the medieval period, Virgil was thought of as a pagan prophet who had foretold the birth of Christ.

Needless to say, this arcane pastime has long fallen out of popularity. But Virgil still pops up in odd places. There is, for instance, a line from the Aeneid at the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York. And, of course, at Falcon College in Esigodini. But there is a bittersweet irony in these words as they relate to Trevor.

Bittersweet because he died before leaving much more than hints of what he may have been capable of achieving at the sport’s highest level. Ironic because the Aeneid was, to many, a celebration of imperial dominance and indigenous subjugation, while Trevor achieved a certain immortality in Zimbabwean cricketing lore precisely for the way in which he confronted cricket’s history as an instrument of empire.