Laura Wolvaardt Lands the Big One

Laura Wolvaardt finally has the one she wanted. When the 21st gsport Awards crowned her Athlete of the Year at the Wanderers Club in Illovo, Johannesburg on Saturday, 8 August 2026, the Proteas Women captain was an ocean away, on duty for Southern Brave at The Hundred in England, living the very life the award exists to celebrate.

“It’s been amazing to have won a couple of gsport awards over the years,” Wolvaardt tells gsport from the Proteas Women’s camp. 

“But obviously this is the one that I really had my eye on the last couple of seasons. I think I was nominated a few times, so I came close, never actually won it. So yeah, just a really huge honour.”

2026 gsport Athlete of the Year, Laura Wolvaardt

The wait gives the win its weight. Nine years separate the schoolgirl who collected School Sports Star of the Year in 2017 from the captain crowned at the 21st edition, a journey that gathered a Minister’s Recognition of Excellence award in 2020 and finalist campaigns in 2023 and 2025 that stopped just short of the summit.

“It almost feels like I’ve walked this journey with gsport,” she says. “At the start of my career I was such a youngster and they sort of recognised me as a young school sports star. And it sort of feels like a full circle moment to be able to come back as Athlete of the Year.”

The season that carried her there will take some matching. In April she blazed a 47-ball century against India, the fastest T20 International hundred by a South African woman and her 17th international century, equalling the then world record for the most hundreds in women’s international cricket. 

She was Player of the Series as South Africa won 4-1, having already led the Proteas Women to back-to-back World Cup finals, at the 2024 T20 World Cup and the 2025 ODI World Cup. She stands as the first South African woman, and only the third woman in history, to score centuries in all three international formats, with more than 5,600 one-day international runs at an average above 51, the fifth most the women’s game has produced.

Little wonder cricket owned the night in Illovo. Her individual honour led a sweep that saw the Proteas Women named Team of the Year, Cricket South Africa take Federation of the Year and Mandla Mashimbyi win Coach of the Year.

“I think it’s just a reflection of a good season that we’ve had. And yeah, the puzzle pieces, I think, are just falling into place and we’re playing some really good cricket.”

The company she kept on the shortlist is not lost on her either. “I think the people that I was nominated alongside and the amount of special female athletes that there are in the country, you know, to be even nominated amongst them is a huge honour. So to win the award is pretty special.”

What makes the recognition richer is that it arrived in the middle of her education as a leader. Handed the captaincy in 2024, she feared the job might crowd her batting. It did the opposite.

“I think I’m very much an over-thinker as a person,” she says. “So when I’m captaining, there’s so much else I have to think about in the game and it almost lets me bat a bit more freely.”

“I hadn’t done much of it at all before I took on the Proteas job. So it was definitely a learn-as-you-go sort of situation, but I definitely think I’m getting better at it, getting the hang of it.”

The batting itself remains a negotiation between the classical and the modern. “I think that’s probably the biggest sort of battle that I have throughout my career is figuring out how to bat with a high strike rate in a way that’s true to me,” she says. 

“I think my game is built on a good base, a good foundation, good technique and sometimes when I just try to smoke it a bit too much I sort of lose that.”

Not even the Athlete of the Year is spared the game’s swings, and she is disarmingly honest about a recent dip. “I think right before the World Cup I was probably in some of the best form that I’ve ever been in. Everything just felt so easy,” she says. “And I thought it was going to be a fantastic World Cup and then it sort of just, you know, just faded away as the competition went on. So it’s such a mental game.”

That mental strength has been tested away from the crease too. Accepted into medicine at Stellenbosch straight out of matric, she chose cricket full-time in 2020, then completed a Bachelor of Science degree cum laude through Unisa between tours.

“I think some of my most hated parts of the day were having to sit down after a long day of training and smash out my studying,” she says. 

“Yeah, I’m glad it’s finished, but I’m also very glad that I did it. It just leaves a few more doors open post-cricket, just to know that I have that degree behind my name.”

For now the degree can wait, because there is a young team to build. In camp in Zimbabwe with the freshest squad of her tenure, the captain has turned teacher.

“I think the average age here is like 22 or something. It’s a really, really young squad,” she says. “I think they’ve brought such a good energy to the group. They’re all just so happy to be here, so excited to get the opportunity.”

Ask her what South African cricket still needs and the answer comes without pause. “Well, I’d love for us to have a league. I think that’s probably the one thing that sets us apart from the top four countries at the moment or the top three,” she says. “I think game time is absolutely crucial and I think we don’t really get enough of it if you’re not playing for the Proteas full time.”

It is the next generation she keeps returning to, the young girls who watched her win from afar just as she once watched others. 

“I think I just want to make them realise how many good things can come of playing cricket these days.”

“I think when I first started it was just for the fun. There was sort of no future in it at the time that I knew of,” she says. “There’s just so many opportunities that have opened and it’s really exciting to be a part of.”

As for the platform that first spotted a Cape Town schoolgirl nine years ago, her instruction to gsport is simple. “You’ve done a whole lot for women’s sport already. So yeah, I would say just keep doing what you’re doing, because it’s been really great!”

The circle is complete. The journey, on the evidence of this golden season, is anything but.

---

Main Photo Caption: Proteas Women captain Laura Wolvaardt talks to gsport after capping a season of rare consistency by winning the Athlete of the Year award, adding the top individual honour to centuries in all three international formats, the fastest T20 International century by a South African woman and back-to-back World Cup final appearances. All Photos: Cricket South Africa

Photo 2 Caption: Wolvaardt was in the middle of her UK campaign at The Hundred, and could not attend the ceremony held at the Johannesburg in August.

Photo 3 Caption: The gifted skipper has led South Africa to consecutive World Cup finals in her first two years as captain of the Proteas Women.

Photo 4 Caption: Seventeen international hundreds place Wolvaardt among the most prolific batters the women’s game has seen.

Photo 5 Caption: A ‘full circle moment’ for Wolvaardt: The 2017 School Sports Star of the Year returns as the 21st edition’s Athlete of the Year.