ICC: Laura Wolvaardt – We want to go a step further and lift the trophy this time

• This is one of the captains’ columns that we are providing for free editorial use along with other preview pieces ahead of the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2024. As in past women’s global events, you will also find match reports, features, photographs, media conference videos and their transcripts, stats packs and a complete media guide in the ICC Online Media Zone to help with coverage of the tournament. For access, please write to media@icc-cricket.com.

It’s very exciting to be heading into my first World Cup as South Africa’s captain.

It’s very special to be given the opportunity to lead my country and it’s going to be a whole new, different challenge for me.

For the past year as captain, I’ve just had to focus on one series at a time and one team at a time. Now, I have to focus on a whole bunch of different teams with every game bringing a new opponent and new players to analyse and plan for. It’s going to be a big challenge but I’m very excited. It’s such a massive honour and privilege and one that not a lot of players get to experience in their careers.

Reaching our first-ever World Cup final in 2023 was a big landmark moment for us. It was a big ‘breaking the barriers and pushing the boundaries’ moment for the team.

Before that, we’d made the semi-finals on a number of occasions, so to be able to go that one step further was very important for us as a group. Now we’d like to go that one step further and lift the trophy, but anything can happen in a final in T20 cricket once you’ve played a whole competition to get there.

It really is just about taking it one game at a time and knowing in the back of our minds that we have the talent and the ability to make the final with a squad that’s not all too different from the one we had last time.

I’m very excited about the T20 World Cup being in Dubai and Sharjah. I think what’s pretty cool is that it’s sort of neutral territory for all of the teams. Most of the teams will be going in with the same amount of experience in the conditions, not having played there much before, so that’s quite exciting. It will be quite interesting to see which team adapts the best to the conditions and is able to sum it up as quickly as they can.

As there’s no real home-ground advantage for anyone, the team that’s able to figure out and assess the conditions the best has the best chance of success. It’s also going to be really exciting to see the crowds in attendance at the matches considering massive expat community in the region. I’m sure that almost every team will have a good number of fans coming out to support them, which is an exciting prospect and quite unique to this year’s tournament.

Our preparation has been very good. We had a good tour to India and then had a month where some of us went off to The Hundred and the rest of us stayed at home. We also had two separate camps where we did match scenarios and a lot of skill work that is needed for T20 cricket.

It’s been winter at home, so temperature-wise it might be a bit of a shock when we get to the tournament. There’s not much you can do to prepare for 40, 45-degree conditions when it’s 10, 15 degrees Celsius back at home.

That will be a big challenge for us, adapting to the heat. But other than that, I think we’ve ticked all the boxes and hopefully it bodes well in the World Cup.