Watch: On her comeback to major cricket, at the Fairbreak Invitational T20 2023, Dane van Niekerk was dismissed for a duck by her wife Marizanne Kapp.
Injuries had kept van Niekerk away from professional cricket for some time. She last played international cricket in September 2021, on South Africa’s tour of the West Indies.
She did play in the 2021/22 Women’s Big Bash League (for Adelaide Strikers) and the 2022 Women’s Hundred (for Oval Invincibles), but little since.
She found some game time ahead of the 2023 T20 World Cup on home soil, first for the South Africa Emerging Players when Zimbabwe toured, then a couple of matches for South Western Districts.
Yet, South Africa left her out of the T20 World Cup squad after she fell 18 seconds short of the cutoff required by Cricket South Africa as part of their fitness test. She announced retirement from international cricket the month after.
It was a bold call, for she has the second-most runs and third-most wickets for South Africa in women’s T20Is, while only three cricketers have more runs than her 1,877 and more wickets than her 65 in the world.
In women’s ODIs, she has 2,175 runs and 138 wickets. The only South African to have more on each count is Marizanne Kapp, her wife, and the bowler she was up against in her first match on her return to professional cricket.
Kapp herself fell first ball in the Falcons’ innings of 150-6 in the Fairbreak Invitational T20 tournament opener, at the Kowloon Cricket Club in Hong Kong.
When the Tornadoes batted, Van Niekerk opened batting with Sterre Kalis of the Netherlands, and Kapp took the first over. The first ball hit van Niekerk on a finger.
Off the second, there was an edge en route to Nannapat Koncharoenkai, the wicketkeeper. Koncharoenkai appealed, Jacqueline Williams raised her finger, van Niekerk walked, but Kapp was quiet in her celebrations.
Despite Sune Luus’ 35-ball 48, the Tornadoes made only 109-9 against Kapp (3-4) and Sornarin Tippoch (3-13).
This was the fourth time Kapp dismissed van Niekerk in professional cricket, after 2016 (caught by Nat Sciver, now Sciver-Brunt), and twice in the 2021/22 WBBL (caught by Beth Mooney and Heather Graham). Van Niekerk is yet to dismiss Kapp at that level.
Watch Marizanne Kapp dismiss Dane van Niekerk here:
Marizanne Kapp gets wife Dané van Niekerk caught behind for 0 😱 #FBI23 | #FairBreak | #CricketTwitter | @kmanventures | @CricketHK pic.twitter.com/p3s7TmRYik
— Fairbreak (@fairbreakglobal) April 3, 2023
