Protea women ‘will pace themselves’

Senior Protea women’s allrounder Marizanne Kapp says that how they pace themselves through the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup in the West Indies will go a long way in determining their progress.

The World Cup starts on Friday, when hosts West Indies face Bangladesh at the Providence Stadium in Guyana. SA’s tournament starts at 2am SA time next Tuesday when they face Sri Lanka at the Darren Sammy National Cricket Stadium in St Lucia.

SA’s warm-up matches ahead of their serious engagements next week have not quite gone according to plan.

A 90-run loss to Pakistan at Coolidge on November 3 sat alongside a three-run loss to India at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium in North Sound.

Kapp was not too concerned about their pre-tournament stutters. “We’re still positive and we would have liked to win every single game but I’ ma believer in peaking at the right time. I’ve seen with the teams [Sydney Sixers and Surrey Stars] that I’ve played for at other levels that the years where we won we trophies’ didn t were start very the well. years when

“People said we should go back to the drawing board and start again next year and we ended up winning tournaments. It’s not about how you start but how you finish,” she said.

SA have a tough assignment against one of the tournament favourites‚ Australia‚ on Wednesday in Guyana.

Kapp said they need to execute better but improvement is their ultimate end goal ahead of next week’s opener.

“I still think we played some good cricket in patches. I didn’t think we played too badly in the India game,” she said.

“So long as we keep on improving with each game‚ we should be fine when the first game starts against Sri Lanka,” said Kapp.