The Sport Industry Awards are one of South Africa’s most distinguished awards ceremonies for sport and business, acknowledging leaders and the movers and shakers within the business of sport. This time around, the prestigious, Sports Personality of the Year award sees Female Proteas and Western Province star batter, Laura Wolvaardt win the reward following a great season.
The 23-year-old opening batter enjoyed a career-best season with the bat in hand in One-Day Internationals (ODI’s) having registered 882 runs including a century and as many as 8 half-centuries in 18 matches at an average of 49.00 in the season alone for South Africa.
A chunk as big as 443 runs had come in the 50-over Women’s World Cup that was played early this year in New Zealand. Laura Wolvaardt’s 443 runs in the tournament happened to be the highest ever by a South African player at the World Cup and helped the Proteas reach the semi-finals.
After making her highly awaited Test debut mid this year against England, shortly after featured in South Africa’s Commonwealth Games campaign and for a most recent instance, the Capetown-born, impacted in her team, Adelaide Strikers championship win at the Women’s Big Bash League (W-BBL).
Laura Wolvaardt commented on the honour, “It’s such an honour to be receiving this award. It has been a big year for me, I have played a lot of cricket and to see women’s cricket being recognised on such a big stage is amazing and it is great to see the progress that the game has made over the last couple of years.
“For me this year, my favourite moment was probably the World Cup. We had a really good World Cup in New Zealand where we made the semi-finals of the tournament. It was a great team performance all-round, and everyone contributed at different times and it was just a really good tournament to be a part of.
“I am very honoured to be receiving this award. Thank you to everyone at the event for making it possible and hopefully it is the beginning of many more to come.”
Laura Wolvaardt when was 16 debuted for South Africa against England in February 2016 and in as early as her 2nd game for South Africa scored her maiden half-century. In the following years’ World Cup, only three other international players scored more runs than her in the 2017 season and all the 3 were from India who’d played 5 extra games.
Laura moved her career from medicine to cricket, but was ready for a juggle as she post her graduation from high school at Parklands College in Cape Town, with 7/7 distinctions, and went on to enroll in a 6-year medicine degree at Stellenbosch University.
Laura Wolvaardt infamously also is a keen singer and songwriter and has got this good a voice that she back and maybe still hosts a music video in which she stars on her school’s Youtube channel. Above all talents, is her cricket and her glorious on and cover drives that’s helped Laura Wolvaardt gain an unmatchable fan following.
(Quote sourced from SA Cricket Mag)