Proteas women didn’t take their chances against England, Wolvaardt admits

Captain Laura Wolvaardt admitted the Proteas could only blame themselves after falling to England in their T20 Women’s World Cup group match in Sharjah on Monday.

Having won their opening game against West Indies a few days earlier, the SA team were handed their first loss of the tournament.

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Set a target of 125 runs to win, England chased it down with four balls to spare, picking up their second win and settling at the top of the Group B standings.

Wolvaardt conceded that the Proteas had needed to put more runs on the board and were too sloppy in the field, dropping five catches during England’s innings.

“We were 10 to 20 short with the bat. Obviously we didn’t take our chances in the field either,” Wolvaardt said.

“I think if we had scored 140 [and taken more catches] it would have been a different game.”

Looking ahead

South Africa were lying third in their group, equal on two points with West Indies, though the Windies were slightly ahead on net run rate.

Wolvaardt remained confident, however, that they could hit back in their remaining group games against Scotland on Wednesday and Bangladesh on Saturday.

With the top two teams in each pool progressing to the semifinals, they still had a good chance of reaching the playoffs but they needed to avoid any more defeats.

‘We can’t dwell on this’

The skipper said it was crucial for her side to shake off their loss to England and focus on their next fixture against minnows Scotland.

“Obviously everyone’s a bit disappointed because it feels like a lot of sort of controllables that we did wrong today (Monday),” Wolvaardt said.

“It’s not like they completely outplayed us. I feel like if we took our chances, ran a bit better in the middle, rotated better, we could have had a good chance of winning that game.

“But yeah, we’ve still got two very important games. I think if we win them well, we still have a big chance of making the semis… so all focus will just be on the next game. We can’t dwell on this because we’ve got a quick turnaround.”