Cricket South Africa (CSA) has announced the South African Emerging squad that’s set to tour Zimbabwe for a five-match Twenty20 (T20) series in Tshwane. The squad of 15 announced include players from the South African senior team, high-performance and South Africa Under-19 set-up as South Africa builds towards hosting the next year’s inaugural ICC Women’s U19 T20 World Cup and the 8th edition of Women’s T20 World Cup.
The 15-player squad has gathered at the CSA Centre of Excellence in Pretoria. Leading up to the commencement of the series, the South Africa Emerging team has had a pre-tour camp to get the squad up and ready for the series.
South Africa emerging squad :
Micaela Andrews, Nobulumko Baneti, Anneke Bosch, Monalisa Legodi, Simone Lourens, Tebogo Macheke, Seshnie Naidu, Raisibe Ntozakhe, Kayla Reyneke, Nondumiso Shangase, Miane Smit, Delmi Tucker, Faye Tunnicliffe, Elandri Janse van Rensburg, Caitlin Wyngaard.
National Academy head coach, Dinesha Devnarain on the 15 players selected said, “It’s a good crop of players that we have here. If you look at the U19 set-up, we have a few girls in matric, so they won’t be joining us. That still leaves us with 50% of our U19 squad.
“We have a couple of players that have just come back from England with loads of experience as well as skillsets. Then you have your Emerging players, who have been in and around the SA camps but haven’t cracked the nod.
“You’ve got 15 players that want it really bad and that’s always easy for a coach to work with.”
Dinesha Devnarain then on the next couple of T20 World Cups (Under-19 and senior team) being in South Africa said, “We’ve got two World Cups at home and when you talk about depth in South African women’s cricket, it’s got to come out of this programme. We have to make sure that these players get the required tools to perform at that level.
“This is a great stepping stone for both of the World Cups. I am glad that it is a T20 series, and we are playing against an opposition that really wants to do well.
“They (Zimbabwe) have their World Cup qualifiers coming up soon, so it’s a great platform to put in place things you want to see at the World Cup; your KPIs, the brand of cricket you want to play, how you want to look on the field and the combinations you want to play.”
SA Emerging vs Zimbabwe series schedule :
28-Aug-22 : 1st T20
29-Aug-22 : 2nd T20
31-Aug-22 : 3rd T20
02-Sep-22 : 4th T20
03-Sep-22 : 5th T20