Proteas women have to be at their best against Bangladesh: It’s make or break

The Proteas women have to pick themselves up and brush themselves off for their must-win final ICC Women’s T20 World Cup pool clash against Bangladesh at Newlands on Tuesday night.

By that stage they may have already been dumped out of the competition, that is if Sri Lanka beat New Zealand in their pool clash on Sunday night, they will progress, while a win for the White Ferns means the Proteas have to beat Bangladesh to make it a three way tie on the log.

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That means qualification will come down to net run rate, which the Proteas will be happy with currently as their two losses to Australia and Sri Lanka were not big, while they thrashed New Zealand and thus have a good net run rate.

Regardless of what happens before, the team will want to end their pool stage on a high in Cape Town on Tuesday night.

“We have to keep our eye on the (Sri Lanka v New Zealand) game. But we still have a game to play on Tuesday and we are very much focused on that,” admitted Proteas captain Sune Luus.

“It’s our last (pool) game against Bangladesh. So we are 100% going to leave everything on that field and give it our all, no matter what the other results are.”

Didn’t go to plan

Looking at their match against Australia on Saturday night, which they lost by six wickets, Luus acknowledged that things didn’t go to plan.

“We didn’t take the fight to them the way we wanted to. But I guess that’s cricket, it’s either going to go your way or it’s not,” said Luus.

“I am still very proud of the girls and some of the performances that they put in. Win or lose we stick together as a team and it’s just to refocus and rebuild now for the next game.”

In Saturday’s match the Proteas posted a below par 124/6 batting first, before Australia recovered from being 40/3 to cruise to a six wicket win with 21 balls to spare in the end.

“We lost a couple of wickets one after the other and that kind of broke the momentum for us. We then couldn’t adjust and get to the big score that we wanted to,” explained Luus.

“I felt like they bowled a lot of good lengths and hit the pitch hard. Even their spinners didn’t give us much room or bowl it in the slot. They bowled hard back of a length and the spinners really dug it into the wicket.

“So I think it was a bit of both. We had some average batting and some good bowling as well. But kudos to them on how they went about their innings.”