If you didn't know Laura Wolvaardt was special, there's a clever South African television advert that could tell you.
A person sits on a couch with their face covered by a cricket magazine. Quinton de Kock is on the cover. A voice asks, "Who is the youngest person to score an ODI century for South Africa?" The person reveals themselves as Wolvaardt, complete with a smug grin. "Sorry, Quinny, it's me," she says and flings the magazine to one side.
At 17 years and 105 days old, in August 2016, Wolvaardt raised her bat to a hundred against Ireland, breaking the record de Kock held from November 2013, when he was 20 years and 326 days old.
Wolvaardt is one of several female sportspeople to feature in the campaign which serves to remind South Africans that women are pioneers in things like becoming the first South African to win The Open (Ashleigh Buhai, if you were wondering) or the first senior football side to get out of the group stage of a World Cup (the women's team, Banyana Banyana). Though gender comparison is often futile, in a world where competitive sport is only emerging from the shadows of patriarchy, it makes a point: women are worthy. And Wolvaardt has always been seen in that light.
As a teenage prodigy, who was also a straight-A student, a wannabe doctor and an occasional musician, she entered the scene as a high-achiever. Two hundreds in the first 15 months of her ODI career promised great things, not least because her batting was so easy on the eye. Comparisons with Aiden Markram's cover drive were meant to flatter Markram, not the other way around.
There was, at one stage, a suggestion that she batted too slowly - with a strike rate of under 60 in her first year in ODIs and around 70 until the 2022 World Cup - but she played significant amounts of T20 cricket and improved. By the time she was made captain after the 2023 T20 World Cup, the only person concerned about whether she could juggle that role with her batting was Wolvaardt herself. She soon answered her own question about her capability.
Wolvaardt had scored a century in her seventh innings as captain and six in the space of two years. Before this World Cup, Wolvaardt averaged 56.40 in ODIs and 40.37 in T20Is with a strike-rate of 122.30 as captain.
Still, there were things missing in her game. Wolvaardt remained predominantly an off-side player and while she could find gaps on the ground, she seldom went over the top. In fact, in 110 ODIs before the Women's World Cup 2025, she'd only hit 11 sixes. In 2025, she felt her ODI game struggled, with one hundred in eight matches in the same time that her opening partner Tazmin Brits scored five. And then, the World Cup started slowly for her with scores of 5 and 14 against England and New Zealand before she started to get going.
A 70 against India set South Africa up for a successful chase, and scores of 60 not out and 90 against Sri Lanka and Pakistan could easily have been much more. Her innings against Sri Lanka only ended because South Africa's target was reached but Wolvaardt got those runs in 47 balls and her most productive shot was the on-drive. Things were changing.
Then came the two games of her life. Wolvaardt's 169 against England in the semi-final was an innings that showed a whole new side to her. She hit sixes over midwicket - four in the innings in fact - and displayed an element of power-hitting that has never previously been associated with her. Then, in the final, her valiant 101 came off 98 balls, a strike-rate of over 100 and she was going quicker through most of it. With some support, the story could have been different for South Africa.
Instead, it's different only for Wolvaardt. No other player has scored more runs than her in a single edition of the ODI World Cup. She was already South Africa's leading ODI run-scorer but reached the 5000 run mark at this tournament and is sixth on the all-time list. At the rate she is going, the smart money would be on her to finish on top, considering she is likely to play longer than Smriti Mandhana, who is three years older.
Despite the disappointment of defeat, she could recognise that she has evolved. "My ODI cricket has come a long way in this tournament. To win games, you've got to be nice and positive and nice and aggressive and I've really tried to explore that a bit in this tournament," she said afterwards. "It hasn't been my best year in ODI cricket. It was maybe a bit too conservative or one-dimensional, so I'm really happy with the different options that I was able to bring in throughout this tournament. I scored quite a lot of leg-side runs and a few leg-side boundaries, which is something I've been working on: to open up different spaces, because they stack that offside and dot me up there. In T20 cricket, it's an option that I use, but not necessarily in ODI cricket, so I'm happy I was able to bring some of that in."
She also made her presence felt in the field, where she took the most outfield catches at this tournament, including the one-handed stunner at extra cover to dismiss Lea Tahuhu - an early candidate for catch of the tournament. With numbers and actions like all the above, Wolvaardt showed she is both an ever-evolving athlete and an astute professional but also that there is real heart behind both those qualities.
Her emotional range has gone from none on public display when South Africa lost the T20 World Cup final last year, to a little in the form of some tears and a few sad smiles when they lost the final in Navi Mumbai. But unlike many of her team-mates, she didn't break.
Whether that is a front from someone who wants to put on a brave face, or the genuine and mature understanding of someone who is aware the world has not ended because a match was lost, is still unknown. For South Africa, it's just leadership and it's of the kind that could be crucial in keeping this team together. "Laura has shown a great deal of fortitude," Mandla Mashimbyi, South Africa's coach said. "And in terms of her talent and in terms of how she led the team, she's also grown in this tournament. Going forward, this team will be even better, will be even stronger, even tighter. I've got no doubt, in the next World Cup, we'll give it a good go."
Mashimbyi is not the only one who believes South Africa will come back, because that is in the DNA of the nation, which excels across sporting codes. But there is also fatigue. Reaching final after final after final and finishing empty-handed is draining and there may be a sense that South African cricket is becoming the sporting code that cries wolf.
One of the few people who can change that is Wolvaardt and because they already know she's special, her perspective is something critics will keep in mind. "I'm really proud that we're able to reach three in a row. It shows that we're doing something right domestically and from a squad perspective, consistency-wise," Wolvaardt said. "Hopefully we can keep reaching finals and one day we can win one."