Girls’s World Cup 2025: South Africa’s long-standing popularity as world cricket’s “chokers” has as soon as once more come again to hang-out them. The heartbreak continued as India clinched their first-ever Girls’s World Cup title, defeating South Africa by 52 runs in an exciting last at Mumbai’s DY Patil Stadium on Monday morning (AEDT). This loss provides to South Africa’s rising checklist of near-misses and heartbreaks in worldwide cricket throughout each males’s and girls’s groups.
India Clinch Historic Girls’s World Cup Title
Led by Shafali Verma and Deepti Sharma, India scripted historical past by profitable their maiden Girls’s World Cup crown. After being requested to bat first in a last delayed by rain, India posted a robust whole of 298 for 7.
Verma was the highest scorer with a fluent 87, whereas Sharma’s all-round brilliance noticed her contribute a helpful 58 off 58 balls. Collectively, they powered India to a commanding place earlier than Sharma turned destroyer with the ball.
In reply, South Africa fought laborious by captain Laura Wolvaardt’s magnificent 101, however her dismissal triggered a collapse. Sharma completed with 5 wickets, sealing India’s triumph earlier than a roaring 45,000-strong house crowd.
South Africa’s World Cup Distress Deepens
This newest defeat provides one other painful chapter to South Africa’s historical past of main match heartbreaks. The ladies’s group has now misplaced three consecutive ICC finals the 2023 Girls’s T20 World Cup Ultimate, the 2024 Girls’s T20 World Cup Ultimate, and now the 2025 Girls’s ODI World Cup Ultimate. Earlier this yr, their U19 ladies’s group additionally suffered defeat within the 2025 U19 Girls’s T20 World Cup Ultimate.
The boys’s aspect hasn’t fared higher they had been knocked out within the 2023 ODI World Cup semifinal and later misplaced the 2024 Males’s T20 World Cup Ultimate to India in a nail-biting end.
A Historical past of Close to Misses
South Africa’s struggles in essential knockout matches stretch again a long time. Essentially the most notorious collapse got here in the course of the 1999 ODI World Cup semifinal in opposition to Australia, once they tied a must-win match after a dramatic run-out a second that turned symbolic of their “choking” tag.
Their solely ICC title stays the 1998 Champions Trophy, making the most recent defeat much more painful for followers hoping to see the group lastly elevate one other international trophy.
For South Africa, the recurring heartbreaks have change into a painful sample. Regardless of producing world-class expertise and persistently reaching the enterprise finish of tournaments, the elusive World Cup trophy continues to slide away, leaving followers and gamers questioning if the so-called “South Africa curse” will ever be damaged.