Wolvaardt’s team have big series against India before T20 World Cup

The absence of both a pace bowler and a wicket-taking spinner risks curtailing the Proteas women’s team’s challenge at the T20 World Cup, with head coach Mandla Mashimbyi admitting the team has to “work with what we have”.

South Africa lost the three-match ODI series to New Zealand yesterday after conceding more than 300 runs in the second and third matches.

They were thumped 4-1 in the T20 series, and there are serious concerns about whether they can maintain their recent run at ICC tournaments.

The Proteas have made it to the final of the last two T20 World Cups and finished as runners-up in the ODI tournament in India last year.

But the New Zealand tour exposed a glaring weakness with the ball. “We’d like to have some pace, but there is nothing on offer at the moment. Obviously we need to change how we think about our bowling attack,” said Mashimbyi.

Leading wicket-taker

Although veteran Ayabonga Khaka finished as the leading wicket-taker with nine in the ODIs, six of those came in the first match, which the Proteas won. Other than Khaka, the bowling statistics make for bleak reading from a South African perspective.

Tumi Sekhukhune is the next best with three wickets. Left-arm spinner Nonkululeko Mlaba, who is such a vital part of the attack, took just one wicket in the series.

Mashimbyi tried to adopt an optimistic stance. “In essence, that makes us a pressure-building type of team, [we need to] understand how our spinners should operate in the middle overs; and once we get those dynamics right, we should be close to where we need to be from a bowling point of view,” he said.

The Proteas play India in a five-match T20 series starting in Durban on April 17 and will hope to have Marizanne Kapp, who missed the New Zealand tour as part of a load management programme, back in the team.

But Kapp is no longer as quick as she used to be, and relies more on swing and seam movement, which can still be devastating on the right day.

A failure to entice Shabnim Ismail — who has shown domestically for the DP World Lions that she can still reach speeds of 120km/h — out of international retirement is hampering Laura Wolvaardt’s team.

Yesterday, they started superbly, reducing New Zealand to 3/3, including dismissing the dangerous Kiwi skipper Amelia Kerr for a first-ball duck. “After the first 10 overs, we let the pressure off, we didn’t squeeze them enough and in those five overs (after the power play) we allowed them to get in,” said Mashimbyi.

211-run partnership

Maddy Green, with a career-best 141 not out and Brooke Halliday who made 98, shared a 211-run fourth-wicket partnership that Mashimbyi said “gave New Zealand life and took the game away from us”.

From a precarious position in the power play, the White Ferns recovered to post 306/7. The Proteas were bowled out for 240, with Wolvaardt top scoring with 69.

“We had a lot of individual scores but couldn’t make big hundreds, on a partnership basis we could have done a lot better and that was the big difference in this series,” said Mashimbyi.

The SA batters made six fifties between them in the ODIs but the only two centuries came from Kerr and Green for the home team.

In the T20s Tazmin Brits and Annerie Dercksen were the only batters to make half-centuries, while New Zealand combined for four fifties along with Kerr’s 105 in the fifth match.

An area that needs improvement against India, said Mashimbyi, was the player’s match awareness. “We need to play the big moments better and not undervalue the importance of partnerships with the bat.”