South Africa’s captain, Laura Wolvaardt, said that the lack of partnerships accounted for the difference between her team and England in the second semifinal of the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup at The Oval on Thursday.
England thrashed South Africa by 40 runs to set up a final date against their oldest rivals, Australia, on Sunday.
“I’m very disappointed, It was just not meant to be for us today,” she said after her team’s defeat. “We were outplayed by a really good England side. I think the main difference between our innings and theirs was the lack of partnerships. They had that really big partnership (133 between Nat Sciver-Brunt and Heather Knight) and we didn’t have any and none of our batters got going. We’ll have to go back to the drawing board.
“On reflection, our batting never fired. We had some good innings (throughout the World Cup) but as a whole we didn’t click.”
England captain Nat Sciver-Brunt was understandably happy with her side’s performance.
“So yeah, we played smartly. I think we had a pretty good score. We could tell there was some variable bounce and keeping stumps in play was going to be important. I thought Freya Kemp especially did so well with her off-pace deliveries and mixing it up for the batters. We had our plans set and we stuck to our guns.”
Asked about the prospect of facing Australia in the final at Lord’s on Sunday she said: “Massive. What an occasion it'll be. Fronting up at a World Cup, and what an opposition to face in the final.” Is it coming home, she was asked. “Hopefully,” she replied.