WI Women 48/10( Nation 26, Neikerk 4/0, Kapp 4/14 Ismail 2/16)
RSA Women 52/0(6.2) ( Lee 29*, Woolvaardt 19*)
RSA Women Win by 10 wickets with 262 balls to spare.
Skipper Dane Van Neikerk surely wouldn’t have dreamt of ‘this’ in her rarest dreams I presume.
For the first time Women’s World Cup has been broadcasted almost all over the world and the supporters out there in the country witnessed completely contrasting dismay of the game from the teams. With the brilliant display of bowling, RSA maintained their unbeaten run in the tournament, on the other hand West Indian players might be blaming themselves for horrible batting collapse. The tournament is alive for the WI only on the paper, as there is a slight possibility of getting through to the semi if they win all of their remaining matches, which seems very much difficult looking at the present form of the WI team.
Skipper Neikerk called right and invited team West Indies woman to bat first. West Indies banked on the opening pair of Matthews and Boyce, who came in place of Walters. Both the South African opening bowler tried to prove their captain right and it was Shabnim Ismail who triggered the bullet for Proteas Women first. First, she got rid of Hayley Matthews (4), who found herself in front of the wicket and then skipper Taylor (4) found her wicket shattered very soon. Then ace bowler Marizanne Kapp joined the party. She came, bowled and conquered. First she trapped debutant Boyce (4) in front of the wicket, then Knight also followed the same way as her teammate to get out for duck in the very next ball.
Dottin was ready to face the third ball of the over and the ball pitched outside the off stamp swinging away from the right-hander Dottin who left it to the keeper. 4th ball was almost the carbon-copy of the 3rd and Dottin treated it in the exact same manner as she did previously. A toe crushing Yorker ended Dottin’s stay in the crease, without troubling the scorer. Those three wickets in an over broke down the backbone of the WI innings. Niekerk then came to give a finishing touch to this horrendous batting as well as the poor execution of shot selection by the opponent. No other player than Nation (26) gave the resistance to the opposition. But she became the 4th scalp of Kapp. Perfect leg-spin bowling was more than enough to demolish the West Indies women batting as they were bowled out for just 48 runs. Kapp (4/14) and Niekerk (4/0) claimed the 2nd and 1st best bowling figures for South Africa. And Niekerk’s figure of 3.2-3-0-4 has become one of the economical bowling figures of the World Cup history.
With mere formalities to be completed, both the openers were in hurry. As not any bowler threw any question with the ball both the opener Lee (29*) and Wolvaardt (19*) hurled their shots on both sides of the wicket. Wolvaardt finished with a four and RSA won the match by 10 wickets and 262 balls to spare. This is the highest winning margin for RSA in WWC. They won with 262 balls to spare, which itself is the 2nd largest victory in terms of balls remaining in the 50 over format and 4th largest if we take both 50 and 60 overs format. Marizanne Kapp became the player of the match for her superb spell.
World T-20 champs West Indies spent another horrible day at the field as unable to implement themselves in the field and failure to mould themselves in a ODI format hunt them. At the same time failure of some of the big names like Matthews, Dottin or skipper herself cost them the match.