EXCLUSIVE: Proteas Women will be fired up for the World Cup, says ex-captain Mignon du Preez

It seems absurd to think now that the Proteas Women’s team travelled on economy flights, juggled full-time jobs whilst playing for the national team, and arrived at World Cups simply excited to return home with some free memorabilia.

But in truth, that wasn’t too long ago, as former captain Mignon du Preez recollects in an exclusive interview with Independent Media ahead of the Proteas’ opening World Cup showdown with England in Guwahati on Friday. 

“Yeah, I made my debut in 2007 for South Africa, my matric year, and I was listening to (Proteas allrounder) Marizanne Kapp speaking about her first World Cup and I remember like, we got to the World Cup, there were no photo shoots, there was no television,” said Du Preez, who played played 269 matches and scored 5684 runs across formats over the course of her 15-year international career. 

“I remember we went to one of the warm-up games in our warm-up clothing and the opposition, we still played England and (former captain and current England coach) Charlotte Edwards looked at us like, what the hell are you guys doing?

“We basically just played for the love of the game and often times we've gone to World Cups, kind of, you all say ‘Yes, we're going to win a World Cup’, but in the back of your mind, we kind of knew that we were nowhere near what the opposition were like and we probably just went to the World Cup to make up some numbers, but that's definitely changed in recent times.”

The seismic change, according to Du Preez, was the Proteas reaching the 2017 World Cup semifinal in Bristol. It may have ended in tears with hosts England edging over the line by two wickets, but with the game being televised back home, the raw emotion and spirit shown by the team inspired an entire generation of young girls, including current Proteas allrounder and ICC Emerging Cricketer of the Year Annerie Dercksen.

It also forced Cricket SA to take the women’s game more seriously, and along with the support of an insurance corporation, the building blocks to professionalism were put in place. 

Eight years later, the fruits of the previous generation are now being harvested with the Proteas perennial contenders at major ICC tournaments, having reached successive ICC T20 World Cup finals (2023 and 2024) and the last World Cup semifinal in New Zealand (2022), which ironically was Du Preez’s ODI swansong. 

She believes this experience will now stand the team in good stead heading into the eight-team competition in India and Sri Lanka, with captain Laura Wolvaardt leading from the front and aided by impressive youngsters such as star allrounder Dercksen.

“I always struggled to separate ‘me the batter’ and ‘me the captain’, but I feel like Laura is the exact opposite. She's almost used that to fire her up, and used that energy to now actually not worry about her own game,” Du Preez said.

“She stays calm and collected and leads by performance every game. (Former Australia captain) Meg Lanning has actually mentioned it in one of the ICC videos where she said Laura is going to be the leading one scorer of the tournament.

“And there’s Dercksie. She always plays with a smile on her face, and as you know that (13:49) was kind of my go-to. She's currently averaging 47 at a strike rate in the 90s over the last while. She's a very powerful and exciting cricketer and takes the game on.” 

With the tournament being staged on the subcontinent, where the pitches are expected to turn significantly towards the latter stages of the competition, Du Preez also feels a great deal of responsibility is going to lie on the shoulders of sole specialist spinner Nonkululeko Mlaba.

Zoning in on Friday’s clash against the English, Du Preez knows the red roses have an ace up their sleeve in coach Edwards. 

“England, they will always be contenders for a semifinal spot, and they are now under new leadership,” Du Preez said. “Charlotte Edwards was a fantastic player and is now coaching them for the first time and she's had major success in T20 tournaments, and actually helped Mumbai Indians to win a trophy in India, so I think that knowledge that she has of Indian conditions would probably help them quite a bit.

“But I think the Proteas have prepared well. They’ve played a lot of cricket on the subcontinent recently, worked on their options in those conditions, and gone to a training camp in Durban which is probably the closest in South Africa we can get to those conditions. They've prepared really well and it's tournament cricket. It’s almost just about the team that just rocks up on the day and makes the most of their opportunities often comes out on top.”