Marizanne Kapp and Laura Wolvaardt of South Africa batting against New Zealand in the ICC T20 Women's World Cup at the Boland Park cricket stadium in Paarl Despite their deflating loss in the T20I series against the tourists, Proteas Women’s captain Laura Wolvaardt (pictured left) is optimistic her side can rebound strongly in their One-Day International series Picture: Phando Jikelo/Independent Media
Despite their deflating loss in the T20I series against the tourists, Proteas Women’s captain Laura Wolvaardt is optimistic her side can rebound strongly in their One-Day International against Sri Lanka in East London on Tuesday.
On Monday, Wolvaardt said: “Not the way we wanted to end the series, but we've had a good couple of days just to refocus, to talk about what we want to achieve in the ODI series and we're all good to go tomorrow.
As for areas of improvement from the T20I series, Wolvaardt acknowledged the team's shortcomings, particularly in key moments of the game.
“In that last T20I especially, we could have been a lot better in pretty much all three departments. We dropped some key catches, we didn't execute well enough with the ball and with the bat, we fell flat a bit in that middle period.
“We improved a lot on our powerplay and our death overs, but just in the middle, we could have rotated the strike a bit better. So we just spoke about plans around that and retouched our ODI framework and blueprint, and how we like to go about that. ODIs have been our stronger format for the last couple of months, so we'll just look to do the same as what we've been doing there,” the skipper added.
Similar to the T20I record between the two sides, South Africa maintains a stronghold over Sri Lanka when it comes to head-to-head battles, with the home side winning 14 of the previous 20 encounters, along with two no results and four wins for Sri Lanka.
In the latest ICC Women’s Championship points table as part of the qualification pathway for the Cricket World Cup 2025 in India, the Proteas Women occupy second place with 20 points after earning 10 wins out of 15 matches while Sri Lanka sits third from bottom with 11 points from 15 games.
Despite South Africa holding a favourable position in the standings, Wolvaardt emphasised the importance of securing points in every match.
“Very important. We find ourselves in quite a good position on that log. But we still have a couple of tough series lying ahead of us, so every point that we can secure is good. It's a massive series, Sri Lanka are a really good side and they showed that in the T20I series by putting up some good performances.
“It's not a series that we can take lightly at all, and we'll have to be at our best to try and secure as many points as we can,” the 24-year-old said.
Addressing concerns about the weather impacting the series, Wolvaardt highlighted the challenges posed by rain disruptions; “It's been pretty frustrating, especially from a training perspective. Just sort of been stuck in the indoors for the last couple of days, which is not ideal. And indoors usually plays quite differently to a pitch that's been under covers for four or five days.
“I'm not sure what the weather's like tomorrow. I think there is a bit of rain around. We'll just have to be flexible and be prepared to possibly play a shortened game if it comes to that. We've just come off of a shorter format so if it does get down to a T20, it's not the worst thing in the world,” Wolvaardt concluded.
The first of three day-night ODIs starts at 2pm at the Buffalo Park Stadium.
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