“Just because it’s not in South Africa doesn’t mean I have to change my approach.” – Lara Goodall captures the essence of her team’s confidence.
Telford Vice | Cape Town
ALONE in her zen garden Mignon du Preez could bat forever. Before the ball left the bowler’s hand she knew where it would pitch, which stroke she would play, and how many runs she would score. She cut with the precision of a surgeon and the power of a superhero. She didn’t find gaps between fielders; she made them.
Lara Goodall batted on the burning deck of a sinking ship. She was going to get out to every delivery she faced. She refused to hit the ball on the ground. She was allergic to convention: everything was a reverse something, an inside out whatever, or still another flavour of outrageousness best hidden from the eyes of impressionable young players.
Not all of the above is true. For instance, Goodall was not dismissed in Lucknow on Sunday. Du Preez was dismissed, but not before they had shared a century stand. It was the second of the innings — Lizelle Lee and Laura Wolvaardt beat them to it. All four passed 50. The team reeled in the biggest target they have yet achieved in an ODI with eight balls to spare to clinch the series.
It was a thoroughly un-South African performance. Where was the usual crippling, inexplicable nervousness in matches that matter? What happened to the fear of opponents who had prevailed over them five times in the seven previous ODIs in these conditions before this series? How dare they show so much self-belief?
Goodall summed it up with bracing directness: “Just because it’s not in South Africa doesn’t mean I have to change my approach.” Much of the rest of what she told an online press conference sounded like an apology for what had gone before and a promise to deliver a brighter future: “I know I haven’t always backed [coach Hilton Moreeng] up, and he’s always backed me. A lot of my teammates have always believed in me, and I haven’t repaid that faith out on the field. They’ve seen what I’m capable of in provincial cricket back home and in net sessions, but there was always some kind of disconnect when I went out onto the field.”
Before South Africa’s white-ball series against Pakistan in Durban in January and February, Goodall was last in the team in India in October 2019. “When I was here two years ago I wasn’t really sure about my game and how to play spin; what my options were. I didn’t back it. It was half-hearted.”
She scored 23 runs in two ODIs and 44 in two T20Is. Consequently she missed the white-ball tour to New Zealand in January and February last year and the subsequent T20 World Cup in Australia, and she was not selected for Australia’s tour to South Africa in March and April, which was cancelled because of Covid-19. It wasn’t Goodall’s first time out in the international cold: she did not play for South Africa from January 2017 to February 2019. Her form slipped further when she reached 50 only once in 17 innings at domestic level from November 2019 to December 2020. Against Pakistan this year she made 27, 26, nought and 11: not conclusive evidence that she had found her way.
But something had changed, thanks to her working “very, very, very hard during the lockdown period”. A slow but solid 49 in the second ODI in Lucknow suggested progress. Confirmation came on Sunday in the shape of a career-best 59 not out. “I took a different approach mentally. I’ve always had good shots and I’ve always had the ability to bat. But mentally was where I had to make that shift.”
The same could be said for the rest of the team. South Africa won five of their six games against Pakistan, but the true test awaited in India — where they had lost six of seven completed matches in 2019 — and at a ground at which they had never played. And without the Dané van Niekerk and Chloe Tryon, who are battling back injuries. Their bowlers won the first match handsomely, stifling India to 177/9. But the home side’s attack returned the favour two days later, when South Africa were dismissed for 157. The third ODI would separate the girls from the women. Rain complicated matters, as did an injury to Trisha Chetty, but there was no doubt the visitors deserved their Duckworth/Lewis success, which was powered by Lee’s undefeated 132.
Two matches to play, one win needed to claim the series. Other South Africa teams might have subconsciously seen that equation as licence to not go for glory. What if they went hard and were hammered? Worse, what if they lost a tight game? What kind of shape would that have left them in for the decider?
This South Africa team didn’t allow those thoughts into their heads. Or if they did they dispelled them. You don’t bat like they did on Sunday without knowing exactly what you want to do and how you want to do it, and believe — not think or hope — that you can. Especially in India. For South Africans watching from far away, that might have been some other team out there. Yes, that looked like Lizelle, Laura, Lara and Mignon. But, compared to what we have seen too many times before, their hearts were bigger and their minds sharper.
It’s difficult not to do them the disservice of bringing that other South Africa team into the conversation; the side who have become better at losing than winning, who do not need a second invitation to complain about bubble life, whose players seem constantly on the lookout for opportunities to defect to less complicated pastures. None of that is true about South Africa’s women’s team. Partly that’s because they need CSA more than their male counterparts do, and partly because they are not indulged as much as the men are by the suits, the public and the press. But, mostly, it’s because they have earned the right to be called the best XI in the country. Bar none.
Now what? “To win 4-1 in India is a statement to the rest of the world that we’re gunning for that World Cup,” Goodall said. You would have to be stupid not to take her seriously.
The last ODI is on Wednesday. The World Cup is in New Zealand in March and April next year. Not all of the above will remain true, but the present is as important as the future. And the truth now is that this moment belongs to a damn fine cricket team. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.
First published by Cricbuzz.
Bulletproof Truth 