Marizanne Kapp once again proved difference-maker as South Africa Women clawed their way back into contention in the 2026 ICC Women's T20 World Cup with a six-wicket win over India Women at Old Trafford on Sunday, June 21.
An all-round performance, with figures of 2 for 27 and an unbeaten 81 off just 45 balls, saw her lead the Proteas home. Kapp started proceedings for South Africa with the wicket of the dangerous Smriti Mandhana, after she had been taken for 16 runs in her first 11 balls. She further
picked up the wicket of Richa Ghosh in the final over of the game. Kapp revealed being ill before the start of the game, and spoke of her aggressive celebration after dismissing Mandhana.
"I was actually a little bit ill in the warm-up and I went into the change-room and just cried a bit. People always say I'm so angry when I play cricket, but show me a bowler who's going to smile when someone hits them for a four or a six. I actually get annoyed when bowlers smile when they bowl wide or get hit," Kapp said at the post-match conference, as reported by ESPNcricinfo.
Coming into bat with South Africa at 25 for 2 in 5.4 overs, Kapp stabilised the innings with a 97-run stand with Tazmin Brits, with the top order failing to get going. The pair stabilised the innings before Kapp went after the India bowlers, scoring seven boundaries and four sixes in the innings. Despite Brits falling for 40, Kapp motored along and sealed South Africa's win with two sixes off Deepti Sharma in the penultimate over in the innings. She emphasised the need to get a partnership going after the early powerplay wickets, after which they could take the game on in the back end of the innings.
"The biggest thing at that stage was just getting a bit of a partnership. It's sometimes so difficult batting in those periods of a T20 game, because you almost can't go too hard because you can't afford to lose another wicket. We had to stabilise and build a bit of a partnership. And we knew if we got ourselves in, we could catch up at the back-end. So it was just, at first, building that partnership. Then, we got to a stage where I just said, 'okay, now we're going to have to start going after it' and that seemed to work for us. As soon as we started being a bit more positive, more balls went into the gaps and into the boundaries," she said.
On a slow Old Trafford wicket where scoring in front of the wicket was difficult, Kapp found much success scoring runs behind square on the leg side. 25 of her 81 runs came in that area as she employed sweeps and ramp shots against the spinners and pacers. She confirmed that she does not employ the leg-side shots as often, but needed to improvise as scoring in front of the wicket was difficult.
"It's not a shot that I play every single game. Sometimes, especially when it's still a wicket like today, it just felt easy going behind the wicket, because hitting down the ground wasn't that easy, especially with no pace on the ball. I just felt like it's better that I started looking at the sweep or the ramp, because the other boundaries felt extremely far and tough to clear," she confirmed.
Kapp, who has time and again stepped up in tricky situations for South Africa, stated that the occasion brings the best in her, but shifted her focus to the two games ahead.
"It's always special playing in the World Cup, and I feel like it probably brings out the best in me. I'm just so proud to be here and represent my country at another World Cup, and even to see how far women's cricket has come. The crowd today, even though they were supporting India, it was so amazing to see, and feel the love for the sport, and still being part of that is absolutely amazing. I can only imagine how it feels to go all the way, but that's not our focus at the moment. We still have two games to play, for now," she said.
South Africa take on the Netherlands at Bristol on June 25 in their next match, and closes out their group stage against Bangladesh at Lord's on June 28. After the opening-match loss to Australia, South Africa now sit on four points after winning their next two games.
