What’s it going to take for a senior national cricket team from this country to win a World Cup?

That’s the question South African fans are again asking themselves after the Proteas women’s team’s failure to get the job done, again, this time at the recent T20 Women’s World Cup in England.

Laura Wolvaardt and her team were knocked out at the semi-finals stage late last week.

It follows other recent close-but-no-cigar efforts by the Proteas women’s side, including runners-up finishes at the 2023 T20 World Cup, 2024 T20 World Cup and 2025 ODI World Cup.

In those finals, the Proteas lost to Australia (2023), New Zealand (2024) and India (2025), so it’s not as if they struggle against just one team.

Of course, the senior men’s national team have also failed to bag a global title, either in T20 or ODI cricket, having lost in finals, semi-finals and quarter-finals.

Some would say South African cricket is cursed … and it’s hard for me to not think so as well.

This country has produced outstanding players, men and women, many of them among the best in the sport, and the coaches, too, both past and present, are highly regarded.

So why can’t any of our senior Proteas teams get over the line?

Sport is a cruel game sometimes and that’s really all there is to it. There’s no magic wand that brings success, it’s a combination of many different parts and sometimes they all fall into place, and other times they just don’t align.

Either one or two key moments have gone against our cricket teams in the past or individuals have either failed, or others have shone in the opposition team, changing the course of a match. It’s infuriating and frustrating, but that’s also the beauty of sport … you just never know what’s going to happen.

The good thing is there’s always another chance. It might not fall to the same group of individuals, or coaches, but a team will get another crack at another stage.

We must just continue to back our cricketers and hope for a winning outcome.

It will happen. It must, surely, at some stage.