Proteas wary of White Ferns
LONDON: The Proteas go into their ICC Women’s World Cup fixture against New Zealand tomorrow quietly confident and wary of their opposition.
Captain Dané van Niekerk said they are aware of how dangerous the White Ferns are.
“We know that they are a very good side,” she commented. “From their batting to their bowling, we know they are a good all-round side, but as always we want to concentrate on what we do well as a side. We’ll obviously have our plans for their batters and bowlers, but at the end of the day, it’s about us and what we want to achieve and the brand of cricket that we want to play.”
New Zealand are coming off a nine-wicket win over Sri Lanka in their opening match, while South Africa beat Pakistan by three wickets in their opener on Sunday.
Van Niekerk wants to see a more clinical performance tomorrow.
“If we can better our performance by 20 or 30 percent in the bowling department and even more in the batting department, we’ll definitely give them a run (for their money). I don’t want another situation where our basics are being forgotten; we need to be more clinical if we want to beat the best teams in the world.”
Prediction of heavy rain does not worry the Proteas captain.
“I don’t think it’s going to worry us at all,” Van Niekerk continued. “The girls came here to prepare for a game against New Zealand and that’s what we’re gonna rock up to do tomorrow. We still have our game plans, we still have skills to execute. If the rain comes, we’ll have to work with it and just be mindful of the Duckworth/Lewis if and when it should come in effect.”
Van Niekerk hopes that the opening game jitters are a thing of the past and that the team can heed the warnings from Leicester.
“On the last match, you always want to be clinical and I think we made it a lot harder on ourselves. There’s no excuse for the fact that that game got so close. That being said, momentum is momentum. Both teams are coming off good wins and at the end of the day, we just need to come out and play our best cricket and hopefully we’ll come out on the right side of the result.”