South Africa Women

South Africa's women had not played a single international fixture in twenty-five years when they walked out against Ireland in Belfast on 5 August 1997. The apartheid-era boycott had shut them out of the game since 1972; the return ODI, followed that same year by a first Women's Cricket World Cup, effectively restarted a history that had begun on 2 December 1960, when the Proteas played their first Test against England at St George's Park and became only the fourth nation to do so.

The nickname comes from the king protea, South Africa's national flower, and the team carries it into green and gold rather than any single home ground — SuperSport Park in Centurion, Newlands, Kingsmead and St George's Park all serve as venues depending on the fixture. The one senior trophy sits oddly early in that timeline: gold at the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, beating Australia by four wickets in the final, at a point when the team had barely been back on the international circuit a year.

Hilton Moreeng took over as head coach in December 2012 and stayed for more than a decade, leading the side through its move from Commonwealth Games outsiders to a team that reached finals it had never previously threatened: the 2023 and 2024 T20 World Cups, and the 2025 ODI World Cup. All three were lost — to Australia, New Zealand and India in turn — under captain Laura Wolvaardt.

Those three finals point to where the rivalry now sits.