Cricket just witnessed something with no precedent. Full stop. Brazil allrounder Laura Cardoso became the first player — in men’s or women’s T20 internationals — to take nine wickets in a single innings. And she did it representing Brazil, which says a lot about how far the sport has spread.
The ICC’s own development reports have tracked associate membership climbing past 100 nations — a number that would have seemed absurd to anyone watching cricket in the 1980s, and Uganda’s qualification for the 2024 men’s T20 World Cup was maybe the sharpest recent evidence that the sport’s geography had permanently shifted.
The Record That Stood Before Cardoso Rewrote It
The previous best figures in a T20I innings belonged to Bhutan’s left-arm spinner Sonam Yeshey, who went 8 for 7 against Myanmar in 2024. On the women’s side, Indonesian offspinner Rohmalia Rohmalia held the record with 7 for 0 against Mongolia in April that same year. That pattern deserves a second look. Every single one of these record-holders represents a nation that most cricket fans couldn’t place on a map a generation ago. The records themselves are a kind of map of the sport’s expansion. Cardoso didn’t just edge past those marks — she blew straight through them. Her final figures read 3-2-4-9.
How the Kalahari Tournament Became the Stage for History
The feat came during the Kalahari Women’s T20I Tournament in Botswana, where Brazil faced Lesotho in what turned out to be a pretty one-sided affair. Brazil batted first and posted 202 for 8 — a total which, however you look at it, holds up. Cardoso herself didn’t contribute much with the bat, dismissed off her second delivery for just four runs. Nobody watching could’ve guessed what was coming next.
Hat-Tricks, Hot Streaks, and a Collapse Nobody Could Stop
Cardoso entered the attack in the second over of Lesotho’s chase. She took her fourth, fifth, and sixth deliveries to complete a hat-trick — and didn’t let up from there. The crowd barely had time to process it. In the fourth over, she claimed four more wickets in five balls. Two more followed in the sixth. Lesotho never threatened the target. They were simply being dismantled.
The Ten Wickets That Weren’t — Almost
Here’s the thing: Cardoso came agonizingly close to something even more extraordinary. With Lesotho at 13 for 9, she stood one wicket away from becoming the first bowler in T20I history across either format to take all ten in an innings. But teammate Marianne Artur, bowling the very next over in her first spell of the match, had the final batter stumped. History settled for nine. Nine! Still, 13 all out is a remarkable number on its own terms — the seventh-lowest total ever recorded in women’s T20Is.
Brazil’s Quiet Rise to the Top of the Table
Brazil won by 189 runs — their third-biggest T20I victory on record — and the win keeps them unbeaten through all five of their group stage matches in the tournament, the only team in the competition without a loss. That kind of consistency, in a sport that barely made a dent in Brazil a decade ago, is a pretty clear signal of how seriously the country has started taking cricket.
The cricket board affiliated with the ICC in 2002, but the sport’s real acceleration came after the confederation restructured its domestic program around 2016, building regional hubs in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro that gave players like Cardoso an actual route to representative cricket.
Cardoso’s nine-wicket haul is the headline. But Brazil sitting alone at the top of that table might be the bigger story worth paying attention to. Tanzania’s women’s team offers a useful comparison: after years of quietly winning regional African tournaments without anyone noticing; they broke into the global conversation almost overnight. Associate cricket moves like that — invisible, then suddenly undeniable.
Cricket Masala 