Proteas Women will be fired up for the World Cup

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.

- ZAAHIER ADAMS

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 today.

“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.”