2023 ICC women's T20 World Cup – Page 2

Aussies über alles. Again …

“Just don’t turn up. It’s too hard, don’t bother going.” – Beth Mooney offers not entirely serious advice on beating Australia.

Telford Vice / Newlands

SOMETIMES it’s what isn’t said at press conferences that tells the real story. For instance, here’s Suné Luus’ after she was asked what it was like to be on the receiving end of another Australia win in a World Cup final.

“They are a well-oiled machine. Their level of professionalism is insane. The world has been looking up to their team for a very, very long time. They’re the best for a reason. If you look at their structures and pipelines, everything is lining up and everything is in order.”

That sounds like glowing praise, and it was. But it was also prefaced by Luus unleashing the mother of all eye-rolls. As in, Australia! Again!

Meg Lanning’s team beat South Africa by 19 runs in Sunday’s T20 World Cup final to earn Australia’s sixth title in the format. They have also won seven ODI World Cups. Of the 20 women’s white-ball championships yet played, only seven haven’t been won by the Aussies. They have a success rate of 65%. Maybe Luus rolled her eyes more out of desperation than jealousy.

After all, she wanted something like what Australia had: “That’s something definitely as a country we’re striving for. We obviously look at the structures and, you know, want to see how we can do that best in our country as well. But they’re the best in the world for a reason, and we can only try to get better to eventually beat them.”

Beth Mooney, whose unbeaten 74 off 53 gelled her team’s innings, also offered a revealing expression. What, she was asked, would she tell a side about how to beat Australia? Mooney pulled a face of mock confusion before answering.

“Just don’t turn up,” she said to a roomful of laughter. “It’s too hard, don’t bother going.” But seriously: “It probably starts within yourself more so than anything rather than worrying about what other people do, but if I give too much away we might start getting beaten. But the good part about the game at the moment is every team’s evolving at a rapid pace and the game’s evolving at a rapid pace too.”

Not at a pace fast enough for Australia’s opponents to compete with them, a race that only England and India can say they are part of seriously. How might a more competitive global women’s game be achieved?

“It’s up to CSA and the minister of sport and whoever’s in charge of cricket in this country to knock on doors and open those doors, and give women’s cricket the best chance they could possibly have to keep up with Australia, with England and with India,” Luus said, before casting an eye further afield. “The WPL is going to be massive for women’s cricket. And I’m hoping it grows from and hopefully we get a SA20 for women. That would really help South African women’s cricket. The leagues are all in the top three nations. That’s why they’re so good, and that’s why they have depth.

“Overseas players come and you get used to playing with and against them. And when a youngster like Annerie Dercksen comes up she’s not looking at Ellyse Perry going, “Wow, I’m playing against her for the first time.’ Because Ellyse might have played with her in a team. That’s something we really need to look at. We’ve been asking for a very long time for a South African league. I know there are budget constraints, and there’s always challenges with resources. But we’ve given our girls the best chance we could, and it’s up to CSA and everyone involved to make that happen.”

Although the South Africans lost, they did earn the experience that came with being the first senior team from their country, male or female, to reach a World Cup final in any format.

“We got a sniff of how a final is, and the feelings and the nerves and everything, and I feel now we have the heartache of not winning a final. Next year’s World Cup, when we get there again, it’s not going to be a big thing for us anymore to break a curse. I think now it’s just for us to really look at the final and say, ‘How are we going to get through the final and be on the other side of that?’”

How many more titles might the Australians have in them? “As many as there are out there,” Mooney said. “We don’t get tired of it. Something we speak about as a group is making sure we’re always evolving. We’ve seen in this tournament there are teams around the world getting better as the years go on and we know we’re being hunted. People look at us for what we do and how we go about it, so it won’t last forever. But we’ll enjoy it for as long as we can, and hopefully we can keep piling up those trophies.”

Cue the eye-rolls.

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Jafta turns silver into gold

“I remember coming back from the Commonwealth Games and everything just broke. I lost who I was.” – Sinalo Jafta

Telford Vice / Newlands

ALL things being equal, Sinalo Jafta wouldn’t have been at Newlands on Sunday. She wouldn’t have played in a T20 World Cup final. She wouldn’t have heard the biggest crowd in the history of women’s sport in South Africa, among them members of her family, cheering for her and her teammates. She might not even have been alive. Happily, all things are not equal.

Jafta shed many tears talking to the press after the match. Australia’s 19-run win is not what made her cry. “Two months ago, I came out of rehab,” she said. “I’ve got God to thank for my sobriety, and the team have been so supportive. I came out on December 8, and for me to get fit, to play … hectic. What a journey. The person you get on the field is someone who gets on their knees every day. I am not in control of anything. God is always in control.”

Jafta said she descended into drinking too much because of abuse she received online: “Social media, it doesn’t support you. You have a really tough day and people just bullet you. That sent me over the edge. It just wouldn’t stop. I remember coming back from the Commonwealth Games [in August] and everything just broke. I lost who I was.

“My mom [Lumka Jafta] was one of the people who supported me through it, and the team doctor and the management gave me two months’ medical leave. I was in treatment for 56 days. I learnt the best about myself. People are allowed to have their opinions but it doesn’t define who I am.”

Jafta effected no dismissals on Sunday, but she also didn’t drop any catches or botch any stumpings. Neither did she concede a bye. She cracked Megan Schutt through cover point for four with a crisp cut, and had scored nine not out off six when South Africa ran out of road. And through it all she could feel the love of people she knew who were in the stands.

“I can pick up my mom’s and my brother’s voice anywhere. And my cousins. So I knew they were behind me. My mom came to her first ever international against Sri Lanka [the tournament opener at Newlands on February 10]. She knows nothing about cricket but she knows how to cover drive, apparently.”

But Jafta’s story could have unfolded starkly differently: “I was walking away from cricket. October 7 is when I made the decision I was going to go into treatment. I was done. I felt like I had nothing left to give. I was 27. I was done. Now, as a 28-year-old, I’ve got my career ahead of me. The fact that I can say I have a career ahead of me …”

The tears ran freely as she glanced down at the medal hanging around her neck. For some people, it would have been the wrong colour: silver. But she held it in her hand and kissed it. “I am going to wear this, I am going to go to bed with it, I am going to shower with it. Because this wasn’t even possible for me. This is my gold for now.”

Not all things are equal. Sometimes silver is more valuable even than gold.

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Australia win the title, South Africa win hearts and minds

What to do about an extraordinary team in an ordinary era?

Telford Vice / Newlands

BLOCKED back to the bowler for no run? Wild cheers. Four whipped through square leg? A hollow moan. The first two deliveries of the T20 World Cup final on Sunday, bowled by Nonkululeko Mlaba to Alyssa Healy, captured Newlands’ heaving heartbeat for all to see, hear and feel.

Whatever else would happen to the only senior South Africa team to reach the final of a World Cup in any format, they would know they were stridently supported. Even when they lose. The South Africans’ reappearance on the field to shake hands with the opponents who had just beaten them by 19 runs earned them a standing ovation.

Australia put in a bespoke Australian performance; all precision and professionalism, not a lot of perceivable passion. Powered by Beth Mooney’s 53-ball 74 not out, they made 156/6 — their lowest total batting first in the tournament, but a target South Africa had reached or surpassed only three times in their 77 T20Is in which they had fielded first.

If you think you might have been shot in this movie before, you have. Mooney scored an unbeaten 78 in the 2020 final against India at the MCG and 62 in the 2022 ODI World Cup decider against England at Hagley Oval. Australia won both times. Of course they did.

Sunday’s victory marked their sixth triumph in the eight editions of this tournament. Australia have also won seven of the 12 ODI World Cups. At some point the ICC will have to consider what to do about the problem of an extraordinary team gorging themselves on success in an era of widespread relative ordinariness. The Australians would be within their rights to argue that they are not what’s wrong with the game. But cricket, especially women’s cricket, cannot afford such predictability.

The Australians themselves looked less excited about their victory than the South Africans had after beating England in their semifinal on Friday. Even winning, it seems, can become boring. Then again, South Africa’s success over the English was a shock to all concerned. All Australia did on Sunday was confirm what everybody, including them, knows already: they are by some distance the best team in the game.

Even so, the unthinkable seemed possible during Australia’s powerplay, when South Africa limited them to 36/1 — their lowest of the tournament. Normal service soon resumed: they were 73/1 halfway through their innings. Only once in the competition had they scored more runs in the first 10 overs.

None of Australia’s partnerships were bigger than the 46 off 41 Mooney shared with Ash Gardner, but the smallest — before Shabnim Ismail dismissed Ellyse Perry and Georgia Wareham with consecutive deliveries in the last over — was the 19 off 18 between Mooney and Meg Lanning. The South Africans bowled well enough and their fielding was on point, but Mooney’s constant and solid presence was the key.

The home side’s win over England was achieved in large part because their batters pulled their weight as well as the bowlers. That didn’t happen during South Africa’s losses to Sri Lanka and Australia in the group stage, when they scored 126/9 and 124/6. That was also their downfall on Sunday. Their 137/6 wasn’t good enough, but it also wasn’t as shaky as some of their batting has been. Simply, they scored too slowly. Their powerplay of 22/1 was their worst of the tournament, and they were 52/2 after 10. Importantly, they were significantly behind their opponents in both metrics.

None of South Africa’s six bowlers got away with conceding less than a run a ball. Three of Australia’s seven — Megan Schutt, Ash Gardner and Ellyse Perry — did, and along with Mooney’s innings that made all the difference.

It was telling that after Friday’s thriller the South Africans took a lap of honour around the ground to salute their fans. Why would they do that then unless they thought they wouldn’t have the beating of Australia? And as if they were enjoying their last moments of happiness in the competition? Another lap followed on Sunday, this one more subdued, and after much of the crowd of 13,000 — a record for any women’s sporting event in South Africa — had melted away into the encroaching evening.

The Australians celebrated their victory with good grace. Perhaps, when you win so often, you learn how to do that kind of thing properly. Other teams don’t get that kind of practice, but they do know what it feels like to be beaten by the better side.

Australia are comfortably that side. South Africa’s consolation is that, on a good day, they are better than all of the rest. Their mission of winning the T20 World Cup was not accomplished, but something else was. And maybe it meant more than a trophy.

To win silverware is all well and good. To win hearts and minds in the way the South Africans have done these past few weeks, and particularly in the past few days, is worth its weight in joy.

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Fiction becomes fact at Newlands

It was almost a pity that a cricket match had to be played.

Telford Vice / Newlands

A woman who had lived more than a few years of life made her way carefully down the stairs separating the lower reaches of blocks D and E in a stand beyond Newlands’ eastern boundary on Sunday.

A light south-easter plucked at her black-and-white dress and white hijab as she went. Her walking stick steadied her every step. She was bound for block E, row J, seat No. 1. Once she had made that effort, she eased into her seat and settled in, her brown face beaming gently at the vividly green field in front of her, the scene bathed in the bright but no longer hot sun of late summer.

In seat No. 2 was a young black woman in a tight, sleeveless top wearing her dusty pink hair short in a pouffy style. More contrasting neighbours would be difficult to find. A black man of similar age to No. 2 was in seat No. 3. Clearly, Nos. 2 and 3 knew each other.

Directly in front of them, in row H, the first seat was occupied by a youngish brown woman who chatted with, to her left, a white woman and, in seat No. 3, a willowy white man wearing John Lennon-style sunglasses under his floppy fringe. The women sported blondish twin ponytails. All were about the same age.

On a stage a hundred or so metres away, Mi Casa, a popular house trio, were oozing through their set. They are fronted by a white man born in Portugal who moved to Port Alfred in the Eastern Cape as a child. The other two members are black men with strong roots in the music scene. One played in his first band at the age of eight. The other’s father was part of Mango Groove, a pop group prominent in the 1980s.

A world away from all that in the President’s Suite, arrangements were being made for the arrival of the man himself, Cyril Ramaphosa. Siya Kolisi and Francois Pienaar, who know a thing or two about winning World Cups with the Springboks, were already there. So was Graeme Smith, who despite his best efforts knows a thing or five about not winning World Cups.

It was just less than an hour before the start of the women’s T20 World Cup final, and it was almost a pity that a cricket match had to be played. South Africa’s society is riven by division so deep that television commercials advertising a particular brand of beer are perennially ridiculed for promoting a fiction of togetherness because they feature people of all races and cultures choosing to spend time together.

So to see exactly that, live, in person and for real, at a sold out Newlands on Sunday tugged at the tearstrings of many South Africans long before the anthems were played, when they flowed freely from even the most cynical eyes. And doubtless also from the woman in block E, row J, seat No. 1.

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Only Aussie giants stand in South Africa’s way

“It’s something we never thought would happen in our country — people standing in queues to buy tickets for a women’s cricket match.” – Suné Luus

Telford Vice / Cape Town

IT isn’t often that bits of paper stuck to windows are worth quoting, but these are extraordinary times. “Sold out,” read the signs on the ticket booths at Newlands on Saturday afternoon — more than 24 hours before South Africa will take on Australia in the women’s T20 World Cup final.

Cape Town isn’t a metropolis like Mumbai or London, where there’s a good chance more people than are needed to fill the ground are going about their business in the surrounding streets on any given match day. It also isn’t Melbourne, which although it has a population comparable to Cape Town’s also has the MCG, with its exponentially bigger capacity than Newlands, which suffers from the added disadvantage of being hemmed in by concrete neighbours on all sides. Unless you live or work nearby, getting there is difficult.

But Saturday morning produced queues outside Newlands, that snaked many metres down the pavement to the end of the block, of aspirant spectators for Sunday’s showdown. If you know South Africans and their idea of sport worth paying money to watch, especially here in the leafy, genteel heart of the patriarchy, you know they wouldn’t ordinarily spend a weekend morning waiting patiently in the summer sun trying to buy access to a game unless it is to be played by men.

The lines wouldn’t have formed had South Africa not earned an unlikely but deserved victory over England in their semi-final at the same ground on Friday. That made Suné Luus’ team the first senior side from her country, men or women, to reach a World Cup final in any format.

Like making it to Newlands, getting to the decider hasn’t been simple for the South Africans. They shambled to two defeats in their four group games, putting in performances that would have buried them had they played like that in one more match. Mostly, their batters couldn’t match their bowlers. On Friday, bat met ball on something like equal terms and the result was astounding. Having scored a decent 164/4 — comfortably their highest total in their last seven T20Is in which they have batted first — South Africa took all eight England wickets to fall for 100 runs and won by six runs.

Their opponents on Sunday couldn’t have taken a more different route to the final. Australia were on auto-pilot throughout the group stage, where they never looked like losing. Only in their semi were they stretched. They made a serious 172/4, which India came within five runs of overhauling.

The wider narrative tells a similar story. Before Friday, South Africa had known the disappointment of five failed white-ball semifinals. There have been 19 women’s global tournaments and the Aussies have been to the final in 12 of them. Or maybe 13: there was no final in the first two ODI World Cups, in 1973 and 1978, which were decided on points. But England and Australia were the only unbeaten teams going into the last match in 1978. So it is considered a de facto final. Of those 13 tournaments, Australia have won 12. If David versus Goliath needs a reboot to bring it up to speed with an age in which women are taken more seriously in every sphere of life — and the gods know it does — this match fits the template.

The key contest looks likely to be Australia’s batters against South Africa’s pace bowlers, but the way the home side’s batters dealt with England’s crack attack says that theory could be in for a shake-up. Suddenly Tazmin Brits is five runs ahead of Alyssa Healy as the tournament’s highest remaining run-scorer, albeit from one fewer innings. But Ash Gardner is the leading wicket-taker left in the competition and no-one has a better economy rate than Grace Harris.

Only the stupid money would not be on Australia to clinch another title. They have too many threats in too many places, who have delivered accordingly, not to be outright favourites. Thing is, much the same could have been said about England before the semi-final. They encountered a South Africa team who had finally got over themselves well enough to play properly.

A jam-packed Newlands will be willing them to do so one more time with feeling on Sunday. Men might form most of the crowd, as they have in the past. The difference this time is that they won’t only watch a cricket match, or even a cricket match played by women. They will attend history in the making, and they will hope as hard as they dare, from the bottom of their hoary, hairy hearts, that they are on the side of the team who write it.

When: February 26, 2023; 3pm Local Time (1pm BST, 6.30pm IST)

Where: Newlands, Cape Town

What to expect: Another perfect day in Africa. And the same willing surface, though a touch weary, that served as the stage for both semifinals.

Team news:

South Africa: Woe betide anyone who tries to tamper with Friday’s XI.

Possible XI: Laura Wolvaardt, Tazmin Brits, Marizanne Kapp, Suné Luus (capt), Chloe Tryon, Anneke Bosch, Nadine de Klerk, Sinalo Jafta, Shabnim Ismail, Ayabonga Khaka, Nonkululeko Mlaba

Australia: The side who beat India in the semis — Australia’s only other game at Newlands during the tournament — will do nicely.

Possible XI: Alyssa Healy, Beth Mooney, Meg Lanning (capt), Ashleigh Gardner, Grace Harris, Ellyse Perry, Tahlia McGrath, Georgia Wareham, Jess Jonassen, Megan Schutt, Darcie Brown

Did you know:

— South Africa have batted first in only two of their eight T20Is at Newlands, and won both of them.

— Meg Lanning used to have the nickname of Fui, a reference to former rugby league player Fuifui Moimoi. Why? Because Lanning’s second name is Moira …

What they said:

“That’s a feeling you can’t really put into words. It’s something we never thought would happen in our country — people standing in queues to buy tickets for a women’s cricket match. That’s when you know women’s sport is growing. I’m hoping that once this World Cup is finished and we play normal series and normal matches in South Africa the crowd won’t be any different.” — Suné Luus adds to her wishlist.

“We know we’re probably not going to be the team that everyone’s cheering for, but that’s fine. It’s going to be an incredible atmosphere and an incredible game at an amazing venue.” — Meg Lanning tries to let the Newlands crowd down gently.

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The real South Africa stand up

“I didn’t even know how much I was defending.” – Shabnim Ismail on bowling the final over.

Telford Vice / Newlands

TO see representatives of three generations of men from one South African family hotfoot it along the pavement outside Newlands on Friday to get through the gates in time for the start of a women’s cricket match was to watch progress on the hoof.

They stopped for a handshake and a how are you, but their priority was as clear as their urgency. They had a T20 World Cup semifinal to watch, and their nervous enthusiasm and the Proteas shirts three of the four of them wore spoke of their commitment to that cause. So much so that not a word was exchanged about the men’s Test series against West Indies, under a new captain and coach, no less, that starts in Centurion on Tuesday.

It was also progress of a sort that a caterer at the ground would, almost 12 hours later at 3am on Saturday, be delivering food to the Atlantic Seaboard for the Formula E Grand Prix, which had snarled traffic to the extent that the journey by car from there to Newlands, which normally takes 20 minutes, dragged on for a gruelling hour.

Maybe Cape Town is becoming big enough to host more than one major event at a time, but the irony of hundreds of thousands of cars forcibly jammed bumper-to-bumper into narrow streets so that less than 3km of public roads could be turned into a private playground for a handful of wannabe F1 drivers and their battery-powered toys for two days wasn’t lost on anyone stuck in traffic.

All of which was forgotten as the sun started to sink over Table Mountain, because the survivors of the trudge and the hotfooters alike, and all of the 7,547 in attendance, had been rewarded for their efforts with an epic; a drama of swings, roundabouts and context rarely seen in any format, much less the shortest. And especially not in matches at the sharp end of tournaments that involve South Africa.

It isn’t fair to throw the women’s team into the mess made by their male counterparts, but that will happen nonetheless. South Africa’s women haven’t often choked, like their men have done too many times. Now the women must be recognised for having played the best game of cricket any team from their country have yet played. Fittingly, the prize for that achievement has taken them to a place no senior South Africa side had been despite reaching eight white-ball semis before Friday’s showdown: a World Cup final.

The South Africans’ six-run win over England, who had beaten them in three of their other five semifinals, was as astonishing as it was deserved. This was no accident caused by a wide here, a misfield there or a poor stroke somewhere else. It was a proper victory, earned through better batting, better bowling, better fielding, and better composure under pressure.

In some ways, it did not make sense. South Africa’s 164/4 was their best total of the tournament but only the seventh highest overall. Just eight times in their 139 other T20Is had they made a bigger score. They won all of those games, but they also totalled 164/4 against India in Potchefstroom in February 2018 — and lost by seven wickets with seven balls remaining. South Africa took 48 deliveries to reach 50 on Friday, England only 29. After 10 overs, South Africa were 67 for none. England were 84/2. South Africa reached three figures off 86 balls, 11 slower than England.

But the English had never successfully chased a higher score to win a T20 World Cup match. Only twice in all of their 87 previous T20Is in which they had fielded first had they hauled in a bigger target. Both times, Danni Wyatt scored a century. This time Wyatt was gone for 34, fooled by Ayabonga Khaka’s slower ball and taken at short fine leg by a slip-sliding Tazmin Brits — one of her world record-equalling four catches.

The best of them was a scrambling, low-as-her-laces grab at midwicket on the edge of the circle after Shabnim Ismail’s bouncer had left Alex Capsey nowhere to hide. Asked to explain, Brits said, “I was hoping you’re going to tell me how I happened to catch it, because I don’t know what happened there. My legs were so tired after batting. I just reacted and, yeah, it stuck.”

She didn’t look tired on a day the ball followed her everywhere. She also didn’t look like a former javelin junior world champion who had had to reinvent a career in sport after breaking her pelvis, dislocating her hip and bursting her bladder in a car crash. She looked like a cricketer; a damn good one.

But the rough and tumble has followed Brits across the boundary. She had to leave the field after taking the Wyatt catch to have her suddenly swollen forearm examined. “It was a vein that popped,” Brits said without a grimace. “It stood out but they pushed it down. We weren’t sure whether [the swelling] was a bone or not. I said to our physio, ‘Please let me go back on the field.’ He said, ‘No, let’s go sort this.’ I said I need to go onto the field. The doctor and him just checked and made sure there’s no bones broken.”

That was two balls after Brits had retreated to claim, above her head, the catch that removed Sophia Dunkley — South Africa’s first strike. Those two wickets fell in a fast, furious over in which Ismail moved the needle on the pace women are capable of generating. Told she had been clocked at 128 kilometres an hour, Ismail said: “No way! You guys are joking. I didn’t know that, but thanks for telling me. I loved it. I always speak about bowling as quick as I can.”

Brits had earned her keep by then. She shared an opening stand of 96 off 82 with Laura Wolvaardt that rendered England wicketless until the 14th over. Brits also put on 46 off 25 with Marizanne Kapp. Lauren Bell had Brits’ flat drive down the ground slickly caught by Katherine Sciver-Brunt, dismissing her for 68 off 55 in the 18th.

Often, South Africa’s bowlers do the winning. On Friday, the load was shared: the big total was followed by eight England wickets crashing for 100 runs. “The batters came to the party today,” Ismail said. “I loved the way they went about the game. As an attack, we knew we could defend anything.”

Brits concurred: “I’m scared when we start gelling, because we haven’t actually gelled as a unit. There’s either been good batters or good bowlers. We haven’t really clicked and we ended up making it to semi. I think today we almost clicked.”

With England needing 13 off the last and Heather Knight well set on 31 off 26, Suné Luus urgently waved Ismail in from the deep to bowl. Luus issued instructions staccato style, then backpedalled swiftly into the outfield to leave her champion fast bowler to get on with it. But 14 runs, one more than England’s remaining target, was how many Ismail had conceded in her previous over. “I didn’t even know how much I was defending,” Ismail said. “I wanted to go for between three and five runs.” She conceded six, and nailed Knight’s off-stump with her third delivery.

The end of the match left Charlie Dean distraught and on her haunches, her head bowed, her hands folded over her bat handle, at the Kelvin Grove End. She had to be fetched from that dark place by her batting partner, Sarah Glenn. The message from Knight will doubtless be, as England’s captain said more than once during her press conference, that “this match doesn’t define us”.

Brits arrived at her presser still in her spikes, which crunched loudly as she picked her way gingerly, clearly conscious of the noise she was making, across the 20 metres of wooden floor that separated the door through which she entered from the table where the microphones, cameras and reporters were primed. “Well,” she said as she sat down, “this is a new experience.”

How would she explain it all years from now? “I don’t know. I still can’t believe it. It feels like I’m still going to need to wake up.” Or keep dreaming. At least until Sunday’s final against Australia.

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England T20 World Cup squad back to earth with a bump

“I’m not going on that cable car ever again.” – Danni Wyatt didn’t have the best time coming down Table Mountain.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

FIRST-world sensibilities suffered a jolt in Cape Town on Wednesday when a cableway car carrying cricketers dropped suddenly for a short distance during its descent from Table Mountain, alarming its cargo of mostly foreign tourists as they dangled between the famous flat top of the 1,086-metre peak and the city below.

Among them were members of the England squad playing in the women’s T20 World Cup who, while they queued to go down the mountain, had seen an ascending car stop before finishing its journey as planned. Normal service resumed without further incident, but Danni Wyatt won’t forget the moment in a hurry — nor risk putting herself through the ordeal again.

“Going back down yesterday, there was a few technical issues that made me very nervous before we boarded the cable car, and then it decided to drop a little bit and swung,” Wyatt said on Thursday. “It was a very terrifying experience. I don’t think I’ll be going up that mountain again anytime soon.” She admitted to having screamed, saying “literally everyone” did: “A lot of people were shaking.”

It wasn’t Wyatt’s first trip up the landmark, but it may be the last: “I went up there about seven years ago when I first came here and I think that’ll be the last time. I’m not going on that cable car ever again. I’m staying away from it. I’ll take the stairs.”

Her teammate, Kate Cross, took that option, which amounts to a hike of between 3km and 5km lasting three to five hours. “Ticked off climbing Table Mountain,” Cross tweeted on Thursday. “One of the great days.”

Wyatt might not share that sentiment. She blamed South Africa’s electricity crisis, which since 2008 has resulted in scheduled rolling power blackouts since 2007 that have increased in frequency to up to 10-and-a-half hours a day: “It’s the loadshedding. Once the electricity goes, that’s it.”

The cableway, which will be 94 years old in October but is regularly upgraded and modernised, is subject to the blackouts. Even so, there is a plan B. “Table Mountain Aerial Cableway Company (TMACC) uses a hydraulic back-up motor during loadshedding that replaces the electric motor that operates our cars and their movement,” Wahida Parker, the managing director of the TMACC, was quoted as saying in a statement.

The England players wanted to descend in the afternoon, which coincided with Table Mountain’s scheduled outage from 4pm to 8.30pm. This time, plan B could have used a plan C: “This [back-up] motor experienced a technical problem on Wednesday, which caused our cars to get stuck on the line. We adopted two approaches simultaneously to resolve the problem. Our technicians worked to find the fault so that we could get moving as soon as possible, while at the same time we contacted the City of Cape Town to ask that the power to our area be restored so that we could bring our passengers down safely and quickly.

“We pride ourselves on providing visitors with a positive and enjoyable experience, and what happened on Wednesday is not what we aim for. We sincerely regret the experience that passengers had who were stuck in our cars. We are happy to confirm that all the passengers safely reached the upper and lower stations.”

And, Parker didn’t have to say, that they left the scene with a story to tell for years to come. Including in England’s dressing room.

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Australia fly into T20 World Cup final on a wing and a runout

“The way I was batting, that was the only way for me to get out.” – Harmanpreet Kaur on her runout.

Telford Vice / Newlands

RARELY in the long and winding annals of bat-throwing has a specimen been hurled with as much vitriol as Harmanpreet Kaur unleashed at Newlands on Thursday. Her respiratory tract infection still stuck in her throat, her helmet ripped off her head, her eyes ablaze, she let fly with visceral anger.

Rather than a scene from a cricket match, it was straight out of a cage fight. Actually, it might have had her disqualified from a cage fight. Whatever else you do around this woman, do not get in her way.

The bat flew many metres into the outfield as if it had been spat out of Harmanpreet’s consciousness never to return, twisting and turning gracelessly through the afternoon air, then landing ugly, bouncing back up, and travelling further still towards the dark alley of shadow cast by the members’ pavilion, whose denizens would deplore such behaviour. Happily, hardly any of them were in attendance.

Don’t feel sorry for the bat. It was not an innocent. The damn fool thing had lodged itself in the pitch instead of gliding seamlessly across the turf and the crease, and causing Harmanpreet to be run out. It had earned its unscheduled journey to nowhere.

Yes, Harmanpreet should have angled her bat better to avoid her fate. Yes, players are taught to do what she failed to do when they are children learning the game. No, she didn’t deserve to be cast as the villain of her team coming closer than most to beating Australia in a T20 World Cup semifinal. She might disagree.

“If my bat didn’t get stuck I would’ve easily finished that run,” Harmanpreet said in the aftermath, stoney-faced and clearly still riled. “If I had stayed till the last moments we could have definitely finished the match one over earlier as we had the momentum. But even after that, Deepti [Sharma] was there, Richa [Ghosh] was there. I had the belief that they could do it, too, because Richa has also batted well in all the matches till now. But after I got out we played seven or eight dot balls in the middle and the match turned. Otherwise, we got a good momentum and the match was going well.”

In fact, India scored three runs off the next six deliveries after the runout. But she wasn’t wrong — that’s where the match was won and lost. Harmanpreet’s dismissal ended a stand of 35 off 26 with Ghosh, which followed her partnership of 69 off 41 with Jemima Rodrigues. When India’s captain took guard, at 28/3 in the fourth, her team needed 8.88 runs an over. When she was removed, they needed 40 off 32. The match was there for the winning. Until it wasn’t.

“My runout was a turning point. Otherwise we were in the game. Everything was going in our favour. It was a disappointment because the way I was batting, that was the only way for me to get out. The way I was meeting the ball, I knew how to take this innings to the end. From the Australian team’s body language, it looked like they had given up the match. But the moment I got out the momentum shifted.”

India finished five runs shy of overhauling Australia’s 172/4, but the truth of it was they had no right to run the perennial and defending champions that close. They had put in a shocking display in the field, leaking runs alarmingly and dropping three catches, and their bowling was scarcely better.

On top of that, the Indians weren’t sure their captain would be involved considering she had sought relief from her infection at a hospital on Wednesday. “Until the team meeting [on Thursday morning], we didn’t even know whether she would play,” Rodrigues said. “When I saw her dragging her bag I had just stepped out of my room, and I knew she was going to play. It’s not easy. Harry Di, from the time she’s come here, she’s been falling sick, she has injuries. And I’ve hardly seen her bat in the nets because something or the other was happening to her. Imagine the kind of thing she was going through, mentally. To come out there and play the way she did said so much about her mental strength and determination. She’s passionate about the sport and this team. And about winning.”

Instead Australia won their 10th consecutive completed women’s T20I, a stream of success that might have been 22 games long and stretched back more than 16 months had it not been for their loss to India in a super over in Mumbai in December last year.

Their bottomless batting produced stands of 52 off 45 between Alyssa Healy and Beth Mooney, 36 off 27 between Mooney and Meg Lanning, 53 off 36 between Lanning and Ash Gardner, and 24 off nine between Lanning and Ellyse Perry.

They spilled one catch, in the 13th when Healy lunged to where a slip might have been and dropped Harmanpreet off Darcie Brown, but otherwise handed down a fielding masterclass. The prime example was Perry, and the best of her sterling work came in the 19th over when Sneh Rana swept Jess Jonassen for what looked for all money like four. Only for Perry to swoop, dive, and flick the ball several metres back from whence it came, all in one magnificent motion, to limit the damage to two.

“We showed our class today in the field,” Gardner said. “We always speak about being the best fielding team in the world, and I think we really showed that. We took those pivotal moments when we needed to. Ellyse Perry was elite on the boundary, the blueprint for our side. Fielding could have been something that was the difference between us and them.”

But Australia weren’t at all assured of success when India reached a runrate of 9.30 midway through their innings — 1.30 better than was required, and with Rodrigues and Harmanpreet in full flow. It wasn’t so much that the Australians bowled badly, but that the Indians were batting with enterprise and intent.

“At the 10-over mark in India’s innings everyone had probably written us off,” Gardner said. “That shows our character and that’s why the best teams win from those positions. When our backs are against the wall we always try and find a way. Today we probably had no right to win at one point. They were cruising. And then we found a way to get some wickets.”

Champions do that. Great champions do it again and again and again. Australia, who have won this trophy five times in its seven previous editions and have reached the final seven times, are already in that category. They have earned a stab at being heralded as even greater champions.

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England expected to end South Africa’s World Cup campaign

“The pressure is all on South Africa. It’s a home World Cup for them.” – Danni Wyatt

Telford Vice / Cape Town

ENGLAND have reached six women’s World T20 or T20 World Cup semifinals, won four of them and had one washed out. South Africa have been there twice, and lost twice.

There is little reason to believe that trend won’t continue when the teams meet in their semifinal at Newlands on Friday. No doubt England expected to be here. The South Africans wouldn’t be human if they weren’t surprised to have made it this far.

Unbeaten England steamrolled their way into the knockout rounds by beating West Indies, Ireland, India and Pakistan. South Africa crashed to a shock defeat by Sri Lanka in the tournament opener, were fortunate to catch New Zealand on an off day and beat them, lost to Australia, and laboured to victory over Bangladesh. Wednesday’s double-header, also at Newlands, offered a stark illustration of the teams’ different worlds.

England hammered Pakistan’s bowling to all parts to total 213/5, the record score in the history of the tournament. They won by 114 runs, another record. A more complete, emphatic performance would be difficult to find.

South Africa’s bowlers brought their end of the bargain by restricting Bangladesh to 113/6. The home side won by 10 wickets, but their turgid chase took 17.5 overs. The required runrate, 5.7 at the start of South Africa’s reply, climbed to 7.10 midway through the innings. And that against a side who have gone home winless. “We made it look a lot harder than it was,” Laura Wolvaardt said afterwards.

The South Africans will face their toughest test yet trying to contain England’s powerhouse batting line-up, who have scored more runs in the tournament than any other team. The English hit 72 fours and a dozen sixes in the group stage — more than anyone else, and amounting to more than 60% of their total runs.

Yet Nat Sciver-Brunt is England’s only representative among the top 10 runscorers in that tournament at No. 1 with 176 in four innings at a strike rate of 147.89. Sixteen players, including South Africa’s Laura Wolvaardt and Tazmin Brits, have made more runs than England’s next best batter, Amy Jones, who has scored 99 in three innings. But just 26 runs separate Jones, Heather Knight, Danni Wyatt and Alice Capsey, England’s next highest runscorers, from Jones — an indication of the team’s batting depth.

It will help the home side that only Australia had a better economy rate in the group games than their 5.71. Even so, Sophie Ecclestone was the joint-leading wicket-taker with eight and had the second-best economy rate, 3.81. Marizanne Kapp was one of five bowlers who were one wicket behind Ecclestone, and Ayabonga Khaka and Kapp were fifth and sixth in the runrate stakes at 4.63 and 4.65.

Whichever way the numbers are spun, it’s difficult to see a clear advantage for the South Africans. They are going to have to play exponentially better, and England exponentially worse, than they have so far in the tournament if the result is to be different from what is expected.

When: February 24, 2023; 3pm Local Time (1pm BST, 6.30pm IST)

Where: Newlands, Cape Town

What to expect: Sunshine and runs. The top two totals in the tournament were scored here.

Team news:

South Africa: The home side’s preferred XI for Newlands should crack the nod.

Possible XI: Laura Wolvaardt, Tazmin Brits, Marizanne Kapp, Suné Luus (capt), Chloe Tryon, Anneke Bosch, Nadine de Klerk, Sinalo Jafta, Shabnim Ismail, Ayabonga Khaka, Nonkululeko Mlaba

England: Lauren Bell, who was rested for Tuesday’s match and replaced by Freya Davies, looks likely to return in a straight swap.

Possible XI: Danni Wyatt, Sophia Dunkley, Alice Capsey, Nat Sciver-Brunt, Heather Knight (capt), Amy Jones, Katherine Sciver-Brunt, Sophie Ecclestone, Sarah Glenn, Charlie Dean, Lauren Bell

Did you know:

— South Africa have met England in three white-ball World Cup semifinals, and lost all of them.

— England are the only other team besides Australia to win this tournament.

What they said:

“Oh, that’s great then. There’s no pressure on us then. We can just go out and enjoy and play freely, enjoy the moment and try and do our best.” — Suné Luus on what she would say to people who think South Africa have no chance of winning.

“The pressure is all on South Africa. It’s a home World Cup for them.” — Danni Wyatt doesn’t agree with Luus.

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SA skittish, England elegant as semifinal showdown looms

“We made it look a lot harder than it was.” – Laura Wolvaardt

Telford Vice / Newlands

CRICKET makes atheists of South Africans. They have no faith that their teams will play properly when it matters, a belief buried deep from years of watching them lose important games. It’s not that the fans demand their teams win, just that they don’t crumble under pressure.

That has been too much to ask too many times to mention here. If you want something to believe in, South Africa’s cricket teams aren’t it. Tuesday at Newlands loomed as another opportunity for South Africa to get it wrong: would they overcome the humbled hurdle posed by Bangladesh to reach the women’s T20 World Cup semi-finals?

The South Africans went into the match with a better winning percentage in the format against Bangladesh than against any other opponents they have played more than once. The only match in 10 they had lost to them was in Mirpur in September 2012 — South Africa’s first ever T20I in Asia.

That seems a solid indication that the hosts would do the business.

Indeed, in the same way that the only misfiring flamethrower among the six ranged around the boundary at Newlands on Tuesday was the most noticeable, sending an apologetic puff of grey smoke into the air instead of a barrelling burst of fire, a South Africa loss would be far more prominent than success.

For them to get the job done at the scene of their improbable implosion in the tournament opener against Sri Lanka on February 10, when they dribbled to defeat by three runs chasing just 130, only added to the weight on their shoulders. So did the fact that they would again have to bat second.

But when Bangladesh stumbled to a Richie Benaud — 22/2 — inside the powerplay and eked out 41 runs in the first half of their innings, it seemed the home side had matters well in hand. One catch had gone down in the second over, when Laura Wolvaardt made a hash of Shamima Sultana’s slash to backward point off Shabnim Ismail, but these things happen.

Another was spilled in the 12th, when Tazmin Brits put herself in the perfect position to catch Sobhana Mostary’s heave off Chloe Tryon. Except she didn’t take the catch. Then the last five overs spawned five overthrows. Wolvaardt called it like she saw it: “It was our worst fielding performance of the competition. We need to keep being positive, not hesitating that first moment.”

You could hear the substantial crowd murmuring: was this another case of the infamous jitters we could see before us? Even if it was, surely a target of 114 wouldn’t present too much of a challenge.

Or would it? Wolvaardt had to scramble for the non-striker’s end in the first over of South Africa’s reply after Brits drove Marufa Akter into the covers, set off and changed her mind. Brits tried to drive Nahida Akter over extra cover in the second over, and Mostary dived but dropped the catch. In the third over, the Bangladeshis botched the runout that should have been the result of both batters bolting for the same end. And all that with only eight runs scored.

Brits might have been stumped off Nahida in the ninth and off Fahima Khatun in the 10th, but Shamima’s glovework let her down both times.

South Africa could scrape together only 26 in their powerplay and were just two runs ahead of their opponents halfway through the innings. But, importantly, their openers were still at the crease. And looking like they had finally realised the game was there to be won. Wolvaardt smoked Fahima down the ground for four in the 11th, but it was only in the 16th, when she drove and swept Nahida for consecutive boundaries, that South Africa looked in control of their chase.

Wolvaardt conceded that the home side were not at their best during the first half of their innings: “We made it look a lot harder than it was; we were losing our shape a bit. We realised we can’t leave this for the last over. When I looked at our score after the powerplay I thought this was not that good, and this is a crunch match for us. I was very grateful that our bowlers restricted them to 113. It’s all mindset. After the drinks break ‘Taz’ and I batted the way we wanted to. It’s about having that mindset earlier and taking braver options earlier.”

Wolvaardt nailed their 10-wicket win with 13 balls to spare by unfurling a cover drive for four off Jahanara Alam. She had scored 66 off 56 and Brits 50 off 51, and their stand of 117 had come off 66. View that list of numbers in isolation and you might think the South Africans had breezed to victory. Of course, the atheists knew that wasn’t nearly the case; that they had come uncomfortably close to being at the scene of another calamity.

Such tension was absent from the day’s first match. England piled up 213/5, a women’s T20 World Cup record, and then strangled Pakistan to a reply of 99/9, another tournament record. Danni Wyatt and Nat Sciver-Brunt hit 74 off 42 before Sciver-Brunt and Amy Jones hammered 95 off 48. Battered into bewilderment, the Pakistanis batted accordingly in what was less a contest than a conquest.

How much of a performance as emphatic as England’s was about planning, how much about professionalism, and how much about what happens when a quality team’s dynamics dictate matters? It was an unfair question, but Sciver-Brunt had a go at answering it: “Previously in the tournament we’ve been building up to a performance like this. We targeted this game as a chance to show everyone what we’re about, it’s the last game in our group. It was a chance to show off a bit and do the things we do really well as a group.”

Doubtless England will look to do that again on Friday, when they take on the South Africans in the second semifinal. The sides have met in three white-ball semis before, and the English have won all of them. “They play a very attacking brand of cricket, and we are going to have to have some good discussions about how we use that against them,” Wolvaardt said. “We are going to have to put a lot of runs on the board against them, especially in the powerplay.”

And a lot more besides, if they want their supporters to start keeping the faith.

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