“We were more focused on the outcome instead of facing the ball.” – Sinalo Jafta
Telford Vice / Newlands
DANé van Niekerk made it beyond the boundary at the T20 World Cup after all. There she was on Newlands’ outfield on Friday, more than an hour before the start of the tournament opener between South Africa and Sri Lanka with the teams’ warm-ups in full flow under the setting sun.
But she was in a skirt. With Hollywood hair. And made-for-TV make-up. Her playing kit would have been 800 kilometres eastward at her home in Kragga Kamma — where she slipped and broke an ankle in January last year to unchain a mournful melody.
If Van Niekerk has spent the past few nights crying herself to sleep at home, who could blame her. Another verse was added to her sad song last month when she was axed from the squad because she had run two kilometres 18 seconds too slow to satisfy CSA’s rigorously applied fitness standards.
Her appearance on Friday was as a television commentator, the same role she had fulfilled during India’s men’s ODI series in South Africa last January. The difference this time was that she wasn’t in a moon boot and on crutches.
So there was nothing to get in the way of her giving Marizanne Kapp, her wife, the biggest of hugs when she emerged from the dugout. There was also nothing to get in the way of the tears. But they had dried by the time Kapp asked Van Niekerk to hold one end of the tape measure while she marked out her run-up at each end. On her way to do so at the Kelvin Grove End, she skipped over some equipment on the ground with a lightness that said at least the ankle was no longer a problem.
Van Niekerk was off the field by the time the anthems were sung. She stood and sang in the broadcasters’ enclosure alongside her former teammate and co-commentator, Mignon du Preez, who exited the game on her own terms in August by retiring. Again, there were tears.
But cricket is, after everything, a show. And shows must go on. This episode was shot through with tension. Veritable sparks flew off the South Africans as they took the field, their anxiety about making a good impression in their first match of a home World Cup palpable. The Lankans went into the game having won only one of their previous six T20Is against South Africa in this country. They had played only one match of any description at Newlands before — a T20I in February 2019, when South Africa won by seven wickets. And when Van Niekerk made an unbeaten 71 off 55.
She also took 3/12 in that game, with Chamari Athapaththu among her victims. Four years on, Athapaththu made a commanding 68 off 50 and shared 86 off 62 with Vishmi Gunaratne in the only stand of the match worth 30 or more. It was also the only time in the game that batting wasn’t made to look like walking backwards and blindfolded across thin ice. That earned Sri Lanka a total of 129/4.
Athapaththu took three consecutive fours off Nadine de Klerk in the 11th over, and in the 13th Gunaratne did the same to Shabnim Ismail — who is a former No. 1-ranked bowler playing in her 109th T20I. Gunaratne, just 17, has only 10 T20I caps. Her onslaught on Shabnim happened between midpitch conferences with Athapaththu, who played her 107th international in the format.
“I told her to focus on the ball and to not think about who is bowling,” Athapaththu said of her instructions to her less experienced partner. “She knew Shabnim was the No. 1 bowler. When she whacked the first boundary I said to her, ‘You’ve hit that boundary off the world No. 1 bowler. You can hit another boundary in this over.’ And she did. I said to her, ‘You are very good, better than the world No. 1 bowler. You can hit another boundary.’”
Three moments summed up South Africa’s performance. In the fifth over, Athapaththu came down the pitch to Ayabonga Khaka, had to change her plan when the bowler saw her coming, and nudged to fine leg. Sinalo Jafta and Chloe Tryon, at slip, set off after the ball and hauled it in just before it would have reached the cushions. Tryon did the diving and Jafta the retrieving, and as they ran back to their positions they allowed themselves a terrified high five for a job well done.
With 20 needed off the last dozen deliveries and South Africa six down with Suné Luus and Jafta having made decent starts to their innings, Inoka Ranaweera delivered to South Africa’s captain, who heaved to long-on and set off. But hesitation and confusion saw both batters stranded, then heading for the same end, then hurtling apparently headlessly for safety at either end. Somehow, the Lankans botched the runout chances they had at both sets of stumps. “Great running,” the giant screen read, apparently not ironically. Newlands likes to think it’s special.
Eight were required off the last ball of the match, and Nonkululeko Mlaba drove Sugandika Kumari high and handsome over extra cover for four. The batters were running, anyway, and after they turned and the awful truth of the home side’s defeat was made real, Khaka sank to her haunches and lowered her head between her knees.
A crowd of 8,402, the biggest ever to watch a women’s game in South Africa, had seen the team almost all of them supported play some of the most skittish cricket imaginable. What had gone so wrong for a side chasing just 130 to win?
“Nerves got in the way, if we’re being honest,” Jafta said. I will commend Cape Town for coming through. The fans were incredible. As an athlete you live for those nerves. We haven’t played in front of such a crowd bar in India.
“We can’t run away from the fact that there are going to be pressure situations. It is a World Cup, and in T20 cricket the margin of error is so slim. We’re focusing on being present. I think that’s what we lacked. We were more focused on the outcome instead of facing the ball.”
Had the presence of Van Niekerk at so important an occasion, and in the wake of her brutal removal from the equation, derailed the South Africans? Kapp, for instance, had seemed unusually upset when she seemed to have pasted Ranaweera for four only to be caught at mid-on. It was a setback, but at 44/2 in the eighth it hardly represented catastrophe.
“As athletes, we’re here to do our job,” Jafta said. “That’s first and foremost, and Marizanne Kapp is probably the most professional person I’ve ever come across. She knows she has her job at hand whether Dané’s here or not. We’re all in a team and everyone supports each other.”
But, for Athapaththu, that wasn’t the whole truth: “No-one accepts that Sri Lanka will win. They think Sri Lanka have average players and are an average side. We don’t have any pressure on us.”
South Africa have exponentially more pressure on them than before Friday’s match. Their next game is against New Zealand in Paarl on Monday. Lose that and they could spend the rest of the tournament as little more than spectators. Them and Van Niekerk.
Cricbuzz
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