WONDER WOMAN

Proteas Women’s all-rounder Marizanne Kapp is all-action package

Photos: AFP | BackpagePix By: Zaahier Adams

SOUTH Africa is accustomed to producing sporting warriors. Men and women who defy the odds, overcome obstacles and climb the highest mountains to achieve their glory. Siya Kolisi, Kgothatso “KG” Montjane, Thembi Kgatlana, Caster Semenya and Ernst van Dyk are the headline acts.

Please now add Marizanne Kapp to the list. The Proteas’ all-rounder is shattering the ceiling for women’s cricket in this country – and the world – almost every time she steps on the turf these days.

Kapp is a global superstar. A woman that young girls all around the world aspire to be.

She is an all-action package that takes the new ball before returning with willow in hand to smash it all parts. Basically, the Proteas’ Wonder Woman.

It is a destiny she would never have imagined for herself growing up. A naturally-talented athlete, Kapp excelled in track and field at DF Malherbe High School in Gqeberha.

She played cricket throughout, but it was “just for fun” and she was “instructed to get a real job” after school.

But Kapp persevered. And today we’re thankful she did.

Her story, though, is much more than being part of the first group of professional women cricketers in South Africa.

Although still only 32, she has been playing international cricket for 13 years already – the last two with a chronic heart condition.

It is so severe that she was forced to miss a T20 World Cup semi-final in Sydney, and retire mid-innings during an Australian Big Bash encounter.

During this period she has also contracted Covid-19 on four occasions. The first time was the worst. She could hardly walk. And it prevented her from having a medical procedure on her heart.

Yet at the same time Kapp has enjoyed the most prolific period of her career. Since January 2019, she averages 49.50 in ODIs, compared to an overall average of 29.60, and picked up her maiden five-for during an excellent World Cup campaign in New Zealand earlier this year.

Add in her Player of the Match performances in the Big Bash final and The Hundred final at Lord’s last year, and she is simply on a different planet.

Kapp is fully aware that her cricket journey is fast drawing to a close. She still wants to be a mother and grow her family with wife Dane van Niekerk.

But she’s not done just yet. There is still a T20 World Cup to be won on home soil next year.

And she showed in the recent Test in Taunton with a record 150 and 49 not out, that she still has the stamina for the long game as well. Her century can sit proudly alongside any great Test innings played by a Proteas Men’s counterpart.

But if you thought Marizanne Kapp’s motivation was for a chair at a men’s dining table, then you would be grossly mistaken.

She is head of her own table. And that’s to be applauded.

Kapp had an excellent ICC World Cup campaign earlier this year in New Zealand.

Marizanne Kapp and her wife and former Proteas captain Dane van Niekerk at 2019 CSA Awards.