Proteas women want to tread where the men never have

South Africa’s women cricketers leave on Friday for their World Cup in England with a greatly increased belief in their own abilities.

That belief is so strong that they are no longer merely targeting the semi-finals.

Also read: Proteas T20 reinforcements don’t exactly inspire hope

They believe they can win the whole tournament.

Part of this belief comes from their own stellar performances over the last year, in which they have gone toe-to-toe with all the best teams in the women’s game.

Most of defending champion Australia’s side have named South Africa as the dark horses for the title on social media over the past few days.

“We’re not going over there to compete or to be in the top four. We want to be the first South African cricket team to win the World Cup,” captain Dane’ van Niekerk said confidently on Thursday.

“We’ve beaten some of the best teams in the world recently, whereas in the past we never really competed with them. We know we can beat any team on any day.”

Former captain Mignon du Preez was equally forthright.

“Our confidence is definitely due to our performances over the last 12 months. We’ve done extremely well and had our best ever results. We’ve won against England and New Zealand, we’ve beaten all the top teams apart from Australia, but we tied against them and had a last-ball loss. So you can see why the opposition are so cautious about us,” Du Preez said.

But global tournaments bring pressures of their own – the women have been watching their men’s counterparts with great sympathy – and the Proteas women want to remain true to themselves when the heat is on them.

“We want to play every game with our hearts and not put ourselves in any brackets with other teams or focus on other players. We want to play our own brand of cricket,” vice-captain Chloe Tryon said.

Captain Van Niekerk has a tremendous bowling attack with numerous options in her hands, led by world number one bowler Marizanne Kapp and her new-ball partner Shabnim Ismail, who is ranked 10^th.

“I’m spoilt for choice with eight different bowlers, which is awesome. So it’s my job to read the game and decide where they’re all best used.

“So we will use horses for courses, I’m not going to be all traditional and if I feel like using a spinner in the powerplay, then I can throw one in there. Looking at the Champions Trophy, one day there seems to be a great pitch and then the next day it’s slow and turning.”

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