Nadine de Klerk draws on Proteas teammates’ belief to elevate her status

Nadine de Klerk has gone from “who is she?” to match-winner and possibly into a new earning bracket after five weeks in India, where she announced herself to the world.

The bubbly 25-year-old whose thunderous hitting at the World Cup had South Africans spilling beer and spewing out their supper has seen her life change.

“If you’d told me before I went that I would have had the World Cup I had, I would have never believed you. It’s great to contribute to any sort of success,” said De Klerk.

From an important cog in the Proteas wheel, albeit one whose status didn’t match that of Laura Wolvaardt or Marizanne Kapp, by the second week of the competition she was a trending topic on social media, with many experts declaring she was the player of the tournament in the round-robin phase.

Now she’s in line for a big payday in the Women’s Premier League, either through retention with her current side, the Mumbai Indians, or elsewhere if she ends up in the player auction later this month.

Though she’s going to have to learn to cope with her newfound status, she understands it only exists because of a stronger sense of belief among her teammates.

“We are a tight group. That makes it easier going onto the field. We want to fight for each other and take care of each other,” said De Klerk, who was named in the ICC’s official team of the tournament.

“The care and love we have for each other makes it easier when you go onto the field knowing that someone has your back. That unity I feel is something we haven’t had until this tournament. That made me believe in myself.”

De Klerk had an astonishing tournament. She scored more than 200 runs; her strike rate of 131.64 was the second highest in the competition (facing a minimum of 120 balls); she took nine wickets, bowled at the death, and she took one of the catches of the tournament against Australia.

South Africa has produced many great all-rounders, including De Klerk’s teammate Marizanne Kapp, but it’s rare that all elements of the game are of such high quality in the most high-pressure situations as De Klerk faced and thrived in in the past month.

Besides the determination, there is also her passion, which meant Sunday’s defeat to India in the World Cup final cut deep. “I was saying to some of my teammates on the aeroplane home that this loss hurt me the most personally out of the finals we’ve played,” said De Klerk.

Her upward trend individually has matched that of the team, who De Klerk said were just happy to be in a final for the first time at the T20 World Cup in South Africa in 2023 — “there weren’t a lot of tears when we lost, because we were so happy to break that barrier.”

This year I was confident we would win the trophy. It didn’t feel like we were going out there to play a final; we were so calm. It was sad we didn’t win

—  Nadine de Klerk

Now, having also lost the T20 World Cup final to New Zealand and the ODI one in Mumbai, defeats are becoming harder to accept.

“There are times when you want to win so desperately you tend to make stupid mistakes because you’re trying too hard. This year I was confident we would win the trophy. It didn’t feel like we were going out there to play a final; we were so calm. It was sad we didn’t win.”

Yet she also sees the bigger picture of what the team has been able to do in the past three years. “Losing overshadows everything. We’ve done incredibly well. I’m chuffed to have been part of a special group of people. To have been to three finals in the past three years is special,” she said.

“Sometimes that can be overlooked because we haven’t got over the final hurdle, but it doesn’t take away from everything we have achieved and the records we have set in the past eight weeks. We are capable of winning a trophy. It’s not far away.”

The next opportunity will be the T20 World Cup in June 2026 in England. “Now we’ve reached three finals, and going into the next T20 World Cup, the final isn’t good enough; we want to win the thing.”