{"id":2918,"date":"2025-11-02T00:22:29","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T00:22:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesofpakistan.tv\/index.php\/2025\/11\/02\/history-at-stake-as-india-and-south-africa-battle-for-maiden-world-cup-triumph\/"},"modified":"2025-11-02T00:22:29","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T00:22:29","slug":"history-at-stake-as-india-and-south-africa-battle-for-maiden-world-cup-triumph","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesofpakistan.tv\/index.php\/2025\/11\/02\/history-at-stake-as-india-and-south-africa-battle-for-maiden-world-cup-triumph\/","title":{"rendered":"History at stake as India and South Africa battle for maiden World Cup triumph"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"medium-insert-images ui-sortable\">\n<figure contenteditable=\"false\">\n    <img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.geo.tv\/assets\/uploads\/updates\/2025-11-01\/631659_2956200_updates.jpg\" alt=\"India captain Harmanpreet Kaur and South Africa skipper Laura Wolvaardt pose with the trophy ahead of the ICC Women\u2019s World Cup 2025 final. \u2014 Facebook\/@cricketworldcup\" width=\"700\" height=\"400\" class=\"\"\/><figcaption contenteditable=\"true\" class=\"\" spellcheck=\"false\" aria-label=\"To enrich screen reader interactions, please activate Accessibility in Grammarly extension settings\">India captain Harmanpreet Kaur and South Africa skipper Laura Wolvaardt pose with the trophy ahead of the ICC Women\u2019s World Cup 2025 final. \u2014 Facebook\/@cricketworldcup<\/figcaption><grammarly-extension data-grammarly-shadow-root=\"true\" class=\"dnXmp\" style=\"position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; pointer-events: none; z-index: 1; --rem: 16;\"\/><grammarly-extension data-grammarly-shadow-root=\"true\" class=\"dnXmp\" style=\"position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; pointer-events: none; z-index: 1; --rem: 16;\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>The Women&#8217;s Cricket World Cup is set to crown a new champion on Sunday, when hosts India take on South Africa, as both teams look to culminate their month-long, nine-match campaign with a maiden global championship.<\/p>\n<p>India are two-time finalists in the One-Day International world championship, having lost the 2005 and 2017 titles to Australia and England. They also lost the Women&#8217;s Twenty20 World Cup final to Australia in 2020.<\/p>\n<p>South Africa are playing a World Cup final for the third year in a row, having reached the T20 World Cup finals in 2023 and 2024, losing to Australia and New Zealand. However, this is the first time they have reached a World Cup final in the 50-over format.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We know very well how it feels like after losing. But the feeling after victory, that is something which we are really looking forward to,&#8221; India captain Harmanpreet Kaur told reporters on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>India reached the semis as the fourth-best team in the league stage. But Kaur and Jemimah Rodrigues helped India pull off the biggest successful chase in women&#8217;s ODI history on Thursday, stunning seven-time champions and favourites Australia to reach the final.<\/p>\n<p>South Africa, who beat India in the league stage last month, earned a dominant 125-run win over four-time champions England in Wednesday&#8217;s semi-final, as captain Laura Wolvaardt put in a player-of-the-match performance, scoring 169 off 143 balls.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The whole crowd is behind India, probably a sold-out stadium. It definitely puts a lot of pressure on them as they&#8217;re sort of expected to win. I think it plays in our favour a bit,&#8221; Wolvaardt said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Every cricket game starts at zero. We can&#8217;t bring any history into the game. Knockout cricket is completely different from league cricket. People can do some very special things in knockout games like Jemimah the other night.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\">High stakes<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Kaur said India have been preparing for the opportunity to play in the World Cup final for the last two years.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Last time we played in the World Cup final, we saw many changes in the sport back home. Women&#8217;s cricket took many steps forward, a lot of girls flocked to the grounds,&#8221; said the 36-year-old.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m sure, when we win the final, there will be even more changes. We will see much more cricket, not only at the international level, but domestically things will improve as well.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>For South Africa, who have never won a World Cup in men&#8217;s or women&#8217;s cricket, the stakes are high as well.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We recently got domestic contracts introduced. So, I can only imagine what something like a World Cup trophy will do back home. Just the number of girls that will be able to see it on TV, who will hear that we&#8217;re a World Cup-winning nation,&#8221; Wolvaardt said.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\n            setTimeout(function(){\n                var scriptElement=document.createElement('script');\n                scriptElement.type=\"text\/javascript\";\n                scriptElement.setAttribute=\"async\";\n                scriptElement.src=\"https:\/\/www.geo.tv\/assets\/front\/js\/lazysizes.min.js\";\n                document.body.appendChild(scriptElement);\n            }, 1000);\n            \/\/setTimeout(function(){ $('.medium-insert-images').find('figure').show() }, 3000);\n            var loadDeferredJS = function() {\n              var lazyloadjs = ['https:\/\/www.geo.tv\/assets\/front\/js\/lazysizes.min.js'];\n              var alljs = ['https:\/\/www.geo.tv\/assets\/front\/js\/ui\/thirdparty.js?ver=133'];\n              var jqueryjs = 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                        \/\/window.addEventListener('load', loadDeferredJSCaptcha);\n                      <\/script><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.geo.tv\/latest\/631659-history-at-stake-as-india-and-south-africa-battle-for-maiden-world-cup-triumph\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>India captain Harmanpreet Kaur and South Africa skipper Laura Wolvaardt pose with the trophy ahead of the ICC Women\u2019s World Cup 2025 final. \u2014 Facebook\/@cricketworldcup The Women&#8217;s Cricket World Cup is set to crown a new champion on Sunday, when hosts India take on South Africa, as both teams look to culminate their month-long, nine-match [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesofpakistan.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesofpakistan.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesofpakistan.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesofpakistan.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesofpakistan.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesofpakistan.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesofpakistan.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesofpakistan.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesofpakistan.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesofpakistan.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}