Crunch time: Win or bust for Proteas women in T20 World Cup

The Proteas women essentially start their ICC Women’s T20 World Cup knockout campaign with their final pool match against Bangladesh at Newlands in Cape Town on Tuesday night (7pm start).

Any loss from now knocks them out of the competition, with them needing to beat Bangladesh to progress to the competition semifinals, where they will most likely come up against England.

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Having won just one of their three games so far, the Proteas are lucky to still be in with a chance of making it to the semis, thanks to their vastly superior net run rate over New Zealand and Sri Lanka, who they will draw level with on points should they win Tuesday night’s encounter.

‘Fortunate’

They head into the match off the back of a six wicket defeat against Australia and they will be looking to produce a much more clinical performance against Bangladesh.

“A lot of us feel really fortunate to be in this position to still have a chance to qualify for the semifinals. It is a vital game for us so we are trying to stay fully focused on that and keep working on our processes,” explained Proteas top order batter Laura Wolvaardt.

“The last game didn’t go how we would have liked. But we are just going to stick to our plans and hopefully we can execute them better against Bangladesh.”

The Proteas batting has been a major problem for them so far this tournament, with their highest score so far the 132/6 that they posted in their only win so far, against New Zealand.

Improve massively

They will need to improve on that massively if they want to challenge for the title and Bangladesh, who have lost all of their games so far comfortably, gives them the perfect opportunity to get that right.

Their only other match at Newlands so far came in their tournament opener against Sri Lanka, where they failed to chase down a below par score of 130.

“We haven’t hit our straps as a batting unit in this tournament. It’s not our plans that have been wrong, we have just lacked execution in some of the games,” admitted Wolvaardt.

“We are pretty clear where we have gone wrong and what we need to do to fix it. It’s just about executing that against their spinners.

“So we are focusing on having that intent while batting, to keep rotating (the strike) and looking to score. We have the talent and we just have to stay calm, execute our plan and it will come right.”

Partnerships

Wolvaardt added on the Sri Lanka match: “We didn’t bat very well in that game. We lacked partnerships up front and didn’t have that set batter to bat long and through the innings. So that is our main focus for Tuesday, to keep building those partnerships.

“Overall I think it’s a nice wicket to bat on. We just need to apply ourselves and hopefully it will turn out better for us.”

Speaking about her own struggling form, Wolvaardt didn’t mince any words admitting that she had not been good enough.

“It’s never nice not making runs, especially at a home tournament. It’s supposed to be a very special time for me so to not make many runs is pretty frustrating,” said Wolvaardt.

“I still feel like I’m hitting the ball pretty well in the nets, so I just need to stay calm and trust that the runs will come when they need to.

“Most of my dismissals have come outside the powerplay. I’m hoping to make the position (at the top of the order) mine moving forward.”