“I feel the best fielding side has the chance of making it far in this competition,” says Laura Wolvaardt

England registered back-to-back wins in the 2024 ICC Women’s T20 World Cup as they defeated the 2023 runners-up South Africa by seven wickets, chasing 125 on Monday in Sharjah. After the match, South Africa captain Laura Wolvaardt and England’s all-rounder Natalie Sciver-Brunt addressed the press conference.

In that match, South Africa won the toss and elected to bat first. “A lot of games were won by teams batting first. We thought of putting 130-140. But we fell short of 10-20 runs,” says Wolvaardt.

Talking about her batting, she added, “It was not the easiest pitch to bat on. But batting through was the plan. I wanted to bat till the 15th over and then whack around.”

After the South African batters gave 124 runs to the bowlers to defend, it was not going to be easy for them to tame the England batters. Eventually, the Proteas failed to defend the target.

“Our spinners lacked a little bit of control in the middle (overs). It is hard to bowl to those (England) batters. They played our spin very well. They had those sweeps and reverse sweeps to tackle our spinners. Also, we had some dropped catches, including mine. I feel the best fielding side has the chance of making it far in this competition,” expressed the South African skipper.

Wolvaardt and her team has another two games to go, and they will look for a comeback. The captain averred, “There were a lot of controllables that we could have done better today. Now, the focus will be on the next game.”

On the other hand, there was a happy Nat Sciver-Brunt, who played a pivotal part in the run chase. This right-handed middle-order batter stitched a 64-run partnership with Danni Wyatt-Hodge to steer her side home.

Sciver-Brunt said, “We were a little bit behind the rate when I came to bat. Our (Danni and Nat) conversations were around being positive and running well between wickets. Boundary was quite hard to hit on that pitch. So, we understood the Importance of running twos. We tried to find gaps and manoeuvre the field.”

Early in the game, England bowled 16 overs of spin. Reflecting on that bowling plan, Sciver-Brunt stated, “We have three world-class spinners (Ecclestone, Dean, and Glenn) and then there is Linsey (Smith). All the spinners communicate really well.”

Talking more about Smith, she said, “It’s great to have her back (after almost five years). She had some good performances in The Women’s Hundred and in domestic cricket. She has made a real impact. She likes to get into battle with batters. She is a great character.”