In their latest fixture, reduced to 20 overs a side due to a lengthy rain delay, South Africa coasted to a 10-wicket victory over ICC Women’s World Cup co-hosts Sri Lanka with more than five overs to spare in Colombo yesterday.

The Citizen reports that in the process, they put one foot in the semi-finals, climbing to second place in the first-round standings with eight points, just one behind log leaders Australia.

“After that game (against England) we just kind of said to ourselves that we know we’re a lot better than that, and we just wanted to forget about it as quickly as we could,” said captain Laura Wolvaardt, who was named Player of the Match after top-scoring with an unbeaten 60 runs.

“I think in these tournaments you have to have a short memory with things like that. You have to take your learnings, maybe think about what you could have done over the next couple of days and then totally switch off from it and focus on the next game, which I think we’ve done really well in this competition so far.”

All-round team effort

Wolvaardt was delighted with the national team’s all-round performance in the round-robin stage.

At different points in the tournament, the top-order and middle-order batters had stood up. She also praised the bowling attack as ‘amazing’ and the side’s fielding as ‘pretty decent’.

But she believes there is still room for improvement, which bodes well for the Proteas for the remainder of the tournament.

“The whole team has contributed at different parts in this tournament, which has been awesome,” Wolvaardt said.

“We definitely haven’t relied on one or two people… so it’s nice to see all those pieces of the puzzle coming together.

“I think we’re still searching for that perfect game as a team, where the top-order fires and the middle-order fires, which is exciting because we’re still winning games even though certain things aren’t perfect.”

South Africa will face Pakistan in their penultimate opening-round match in Colombo on Tuesday.

They could still qualify for the semi-finals before that. If Pakistan beat New Zealand in their match in Colombo today, the Proteas will progress to the play-offs. At the time of publishing, their match was delayed due to rain.