Kayla Reyneke announced herself on the international cricket stage the first time she had the chance to do so.
On debut this February, Reyneke scored an unbeaten 29 off 16 balls to take South Africa to a last-ball victory over Pakistan in Potchefstroom. She also took two wickets for 13 runs in four overs and was named player of the match for her all-round heroics.
A little more than a month later, she did it again.
Against New Zealand in Hamilton, Reyneke scored an unbeaten 28 off nine balls at an astounding strike rate of 311. She smashed a hat-trick of sixes in the final over, off veteran allrounder Sophie Devine, and earned a second player of the match award in four games. Better still, those 18 runs ended up being South Africa’ s margin of victory in the game and the manner in which Reyneke went about her knock caught eyes and dropped jaws.
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She spends an equal amount of time on her offspin, and it could be argued that is her stronger suit based on the numbers so far. In February last year, Reyneke finished as the thirdhighest wicket-taker at the under-19 World Cup and led South Africa to the tournament final. They lost to a strong Indian side but gained valuable experience.
“ It was an honour and a privilege to have captained my team to the final,” Reyneke said.“ It would have been special to bring the trophy back home, but we made a lot of memories, so I couldn’ t have asked for anything better.”
By the following summer, as Reyneke was finishing her schooling at Bellville High, she was also contracted by Western Province. She has since become a regular, and indeed a star, in the side. In the 2025-26 season, Reyneke had the second-highest strike-rate among any batter in the Pro50 competition, which speaks to her big-hitting ability.
The ease with which she took to the domestic game is a testament to the value of increased schools ' cricket and an ICC under-19 tournament which is only two editions old.“ There is a bit of a difference between domestic cricket and under-19 cricket but with under-19 cricket, you feel as though you have a bit of a taste of international cricket,” Reyneke said.“ Now I’ ve found the intensity and the volume also a lot higher in international cricket.”
Reyneke was so confident that she turned down her captain and South Africa’ s leading runscorer in women’ s T20Is, Laura Wolvaardt, and stole the strike for herself. Wolvaardt praised the move and lauded Reyneke’ s” clean hitting,” in a performance that could see the 20-year-old anointed the team’ s new batting finisher. It’ s a role she seems keen to embrace.
“ As a finisher, it ' s not always coming in and hitting it straight off the bat. It’ s also about reading the situation and where the game is at,” she told Modern Athlete from New Zealand.
“ But power hitting is really important. I try to take some time in my training sessions to just cleanly hit the ball out of the middle, or just to work on the flow off the bat and then take it from there.”
That’ s set to continue for Reyneke, who seems to have a big future in the game, even if cricket was not her first-choice sport. As a teenager, Reyneke was a javelin thrower and was the South African under-15 champion. In grade 8, she was throwing a distance of 47.64 metres but now uses that bullet arm on the field. With a T20 World Cup coming up in June, Reyneke has the opportunity to represent South Africa in a major tournament at senior level and add to her list of achievements.
As for future goals, she has a few but she’ s keeping them fairly quiet for now.“ As a youngster, I have a lot of dreams that you want to achieve, but I’ m also not looking too far ahead and trying to be as present as possible,” she said.“ I want to represent my country for a long time and maybe participate in a few international leagues.”
She may even have designs on the national captaincy, based on who her role models are: current skipper Laura Wolvaardt and former leader Dane van Niekerk.“ Wolfie is a good captain but I have learnt a lot from Dane because she was also at Western Province. At the moment, I’ m learning from how Wolfie is managing her batting and being captain. It is quite exciting, especially to be around other world-class players.”
That doesn’ t mean Reyneke is overawed. Asked about those big shots off Devine, she had a quick reply.“ I’ m not playing the name but the ball and trying to win games for my team.”
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