After going down to Sri Lanka in the T20 series, Proteas Women will look to redeem themselves in the ODI series.
There is no doubt that South Africa is the more favored side in the longer format. The first match will be played in East London, and the rain is predicted to make an appearance. South Africa will be hoping that if overs are reduced, it wouldn’t be that much of a reduction.
“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,” said the Proteas captain, Laura Wolvaardt.
At the same time, even though Sri Lanka would fancy themselves over South Africa in a shortened game. The rain won’t help their spinners as the ball will be hard to grip and may not offer spin.
The first ODI match is important, as it will set the tone of which team might win the 3 match series. Even though Sri Lanka is the less fancied team in ODI cricket, the wickets that the series will be played on favours the subcontinent side.
The South African batters will be tested on their skill of playing spinners. The difference between T20 and ODI is that the Sri Lankan spinners will be more patient compared to T20 cricket, where they have to do something.
One thing is certain this tour has been great for Laura Wolvaardt and her troops even though it has proven to present more questions than answers. The tour to Australia was a masterclass on how to play pace, and this tour against Sri Lanka has been a masterclass on how to play spin.
“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.” Laura continued.
“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 would 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,”
South Africa has failed in both tests, but the team has learned a lot. The question now is, will the learning result in the Proteas doing well at the World Cup?
Yes, South Africa views this ODI series as important, but like the T20 series, they are not fully focused on this series. The Proteas eyes are on the T20 World Cup in September and next years ODI World Cup in India, which will be in January.
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