Meet Nonkululeko Mlaba: From the township to brink of cricket World Cup glory

If the Proteas women’s team win the T20 World Cup in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday you can be sure Nonkululeko Mlaba will have played a significant role in the victory.

The slow left-arm bowler will be a key figure in the final against New Zealand, as she has been throughout the tournament, and is in every match she plays for South Africa.

And while batters Laura Wolvaardt, Tazmin Brits and Anneke Bosch, and all-rounder Marizanne Kapp, are among the stars of the Proteas’ march to the final and will also have big roles to play on Sunday, Mlaba could be the brightest star of all, and if all goes well, could even win the player of the World Cup award.

Her slow, left-arm spin bowling has bamboozled many a batter in the UAE over the last few weeks and with 10 wickets to her name so far she is in the running to be the top bowler in the tournament.

At just 24 she still has plenty of games ahead of her, but it is this one match she and her team-mates will desperately want to win.

Last year’s final in Cape Town

Eighteen months ago in Cape Town, the Proteas lost the T20 World Cup final to Australia – the team they hammered in the semi-finals in Dubai on Thursday – but this could be their big chance to become South Africa’s first national cricket team to lift a major international limited-overs trophy.

Reflecting on that match, played in front of thousands of fans at Newlands, Mlaba told Sportstar.thehindu.com it was “a bit overwhelming”.

“We didn’t know how to do certain things in some situations. I think we should have been calmer. We were just rushing. We were trying to do so many things. We should have tried to take every ball one at a time.”

Lessons have no doubt been learned and things are sure to be different on Sunday.

“Leftie”, as her teammates refer to her, will be keen to make a big impression, something she’s done from the first time she started playing cricket, at 13.

As a pupil at Thandolwesizwe High School in Ntuzuma, KZN, Mlaba was more interested in singing and dancing – she was a star of Pantsula.

But no opportunities in the township to further her dancing dreams and a trip to the local cricket club one day to support her brother and sister changed her life completely and sent her on a different path.

Before she knew it, she was bowling for the Lindelani Cricket Club from the age of 14, “to kill time”, and quickly moved up the ranks, first as a fast bowler and then as a spinner.

‘She had to pull up her socks’

“In my club, we only had one spinner and one left-arm pacer. My coach decided to move me to spin so there would be a right-left spin combination. It wasn’t too hard. I had to fine-tune some technique but I naturally got the turn,” she told Sportstar.thehindu.com.

Her then coach, Sandile Hlongwa, told Daily Maverick: “I won’t lie, she wasn’t very competitive at age-group level, and she was very lazy.

“It was only in matric when she realised that she was about to leave the township programme system that she had to pull up her socks.

“So that’s when she started working hard. This served her well because not long after, as she was done writing her matric exams (and after playing for the SA Schools side in 2018), she was called up to the Cricket South Africa Academy. And that’s when it all just blossomed for her.”

Mlaba made her T20 debut for South Africa against India in Surat in September 2019, after playing for South African Emerging Players two months earlier.

“It felt like a movie or a dream. I was so nervous. It was so loud that I couldn’t even hear my teammates talking to me,” she said about the experience.

On the brink of glory

Now, 57 T20 Internationals later Mlaba is among the best bowlers in the world. She has taken 48 wickets in her T20 career, with a best of 4/29 recorded against the West Indies in this World Cup tournament, and there’s surely more to come in the final.

The Proteas and Mlaba are one win away from creating history and becoming instant heroes in South African cricket. Who would have thought it?

Earlier this year she said: “I didn’t go to a big school where I’d get to see people of other races. I went to school in the township. For me, as a township girl, playing cricket … starting, cricket was more for white people. For me to get to where I am motivating people and helping them see that anything is possible.”

Indeed, anything is possible — Mlaba is proof of that. How inspiring wouldn’t it be for thousands of other young girls across South Africa if the Proteas triumphed on Sunday?