Women’s T20 World Cup: Biggest test of Proteas’ credentials as Australia await

The Proteas women are set to face the biggest test of their T20 World Cup credentials when they take on tournament favourites Australia in their third pool match at St George’s Park in Gqeberha on Saturday night.

The tournament hosts suffered a disastrous start to their campaign with a shock loss against Sri Lanka in the competition opener, before bouncing back in style with a thumping win over New Zealand in their second match earlier this week.

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With just the top two teams from their pool of five progressing to the tournament semifinals, the Proteas will need to beat Australia to keep qualification in their own hands.

A loss against Australia would give Sri Lanka the upper hand and would mean that the Proteas would have to rely on other teams beating them to stand any chance of making the knock-outs.

Vice-captain Chloe Tryon is fully aware of the challenge that they face and also the importance of what could be a make or break match in the context of their World Cup campaign.

“We have a game against Australia where we have to play our best. We want to win it and we want to go into our (final pool) match against Bangladesh very confident,” said Tryon.

“We know it is a very important game. I think the last time we played them in a group game was in 2014 where we lost by five or six runs. So we know their record and we know the brand of cricket that they play.

“We have to make sure that we do our prep well on them and make sure that we are 200% ready for them on Saturday.”

Batting struggles

In both matches so far the Proteas batters have struggled, with them unable to chase down a below par total against Sri Lanka, while their score against New Zealand was probably 20-runs short of what it should have been.

They will thus need to improve that drastically if they want to beat Australia, and Tryon believes that if they can just keep things simple and put their heads down and work, they will come right.

“I don’t think it’s (batting) a concern. I just think that we haven’t been keeping it simple. We know that the wickets (they have been playing on) are kind of slow and up and down, and we need to take responsibility,” explained Tryon.

“We need to bat a little bit longer, create those partnerships and bat well towards the end. I also feel that we have been getting ourselves out in silly ways.

“So I think it’s just small things for us. I don’t think it’s anything to be concerned about. We have a quality batting line-up and it’s just about putting our heads down and working as hard as we can, especially towards the back end of an innings.”