Captain Van Niekerk admires the way Indian bowlers changed their style
PROTEAS women captain Dane van Niekerk admits her team needs to go back to the “drawing board” after losing both the one-day and T20 international series to India.
Last year’s ICC World Cup runners-up claimed the ODI series 2-1, winning the first two matches by 88 and 178 runs respectively. The margins of victory in the 3-1 T20 series win were equally convincing, with South Africa going down by seven wickets, nine wickets and 54 runs.
“That’s one thing we’ve addressed and we have to go back to the drawing board,” Van Niekerk said. “The way we’ve been losing isn’t pleasing at all. A loss never is pleasing, but if you go out with a fight and the margins are smaller you can quite stomach it. The way we lose – like we spoke about the attacking brand of cricket – and even if we lose we want to lose in an attacking way and not in the manner we have.”
The reasons for SA’s defeats have primarily been due to the poor form of the batsmen. Van Niekerk’s team were bundled out for just 112 at Newlands on Saturday. In the ODIs they were also bundled out for 125 on a couple of occasions.
“Our batting department has struggled in the past, but we are getting to 140-plus consistently. That’s a big positive. And the fact that we haven’t played (T20 cricket) in 18 months and the way we came out and played – we said we wanted to play an attacking brand – and I think we have done that very well, besides today. We got beaten by a better team today,” she said.
Much like their male counterparts, the Proteas women’s team also struggled to maximise the advantage of the fielding restrictions implemented in the powerplay overs. India gained a significant advantage during the first six overs and it is definitely an area the Proteas need to improve upon ahead of the Women’s World T20 in the West Indies in November.
“I think the difference in powerplay overs, obviously,” Van Niekerk said. “India bowled a lot of good balls. We really tried to take it to them, but the change of pace did us in a bit. We could have, in the middle overs when we bowled, restricted them a bit there but credit to India.
“I spoke about it to Lizelle (Lee) when we were sitting up there (about using the variations). India used it really well. With us, when we changed our pace our lengths were wrong. India put it at the right lengths – we thought it was there to hit but it wasn’t. They way they used it was really smart.”