“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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