Proteas captain Laura Wolvaardt wants to unite Mzansi with a special World Cup performance

Proteas women’s captain Laura Wolvaardt hopes South Africa will rally behind them as she is set to lead a team that is determined to make the country proud in the upcoming ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup in India.

The Proteas women were the first South African senior cricket team to play in the World Cup final when they reached the final of the T20 World Cup at Newlands in Cape Town a little over two years ago.

South Africa would sell out the picturesque Newlands on that fateful day and flocked to the local pubs and shebeens to support the history-making team.

Wolvaardt is calling for the same support as she is set to lead the Proteas women’s team in the upcoming World Cup in India. 

“To the fans at home, sport has incredible power to unite people in South Africa. The thought of families and friends gathering to watch us play is so special. It makes us proud as a group to know that people are behind us,” she said.

“We want to make our country proud, and we want to do our families proud. Every bit of support motivates us to be a united force on the field, and hopefully unite the nation too. We’re very excited, and I hope everyone tunes in to watch us.”

Wolvaart will lead the side for the first time as captain in the ODI World Cup and will use her experience of guiding the Proteas to the T20 World Cup final last year in the UAE to her advantage.

The 26-year-old acknowledges, though, that there is a difference in captaining in the two formats.

“It’s so special to lead South Africa at the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup. I captained at the Women’s T20 World Cup last year, but ODI cricket feels very different – there’s more pressure and many more tactical decisions to make,” said Wolvaardt.

“In T20s, once the Powerplay is done, the game can be more straightforward, but in ODIs, you constantly have to balance when to attack and when to defend. It’s a huge honour and an exciting challenge, and I’m very happy and grateful to lead this side.”

South Africa head into the showpiece event on the back of some impressive performances in foreign conditions, having won a series in the Caribbean earlier this year and another in Pakistan recently.

The team is as prepared as they can be for the World Cup, as they also played a Tri-Nations Series in Sri Lanka against the hosts and India Women earlier this year.

Wolvaardt believes she will lead a team that has learnt from its previous World Cup setbacks and one that is on form. 

“We’ve had good preparation for this tournament and learned a lot of lessons from past ICC events. In the last few ODI World Cups, we made semi-finals,” she said. 

“I remember being part of that first semi-final loss in 2017 – it really hurt the group, but it helped us see that we could compete with the best sides in the world and qualifying for a final one day is more a question of “when” and not “if” it would ever happen. The belief is very strong on our side going into this tournament.

“We’d like to keep that momentum going, and we'll have to play very good cricket in tough conditions, but I strongly believe that we have a very good squad of 15 players on the plane, so I’m very excited for this tournament.”

The Proteas women have two warm-up matches against Bangladesh on Thursday and Pakistan on 28 September before they get their World Cup campaign underway against England on 3 October.