Du Preez hopes for role in Proteas women’s team
● Although Dillon du Preez will be part of the Proteas women’s team management at the T20 World Cup, his role will only be determined after a series of meetings at Cricket South Africa (CSA) in the next week.
Du Preez was named as interim coach for the team’s tour to India recently, where they won only one out of seven matches in a multi-format series. However, he said there were plenty of positives from the trip, which was undertaken just weeks after Hilton Moreeng’s more than decade-long tenure as head coach ended.
Asked about the experience, and whether he wants the job on a full-time basis, Du Preez, 42, said: “It was cool. We must find out from the players if they were happy or not, but I really enjoyed it. Maybe I’m not the right guy (but) it would be nice.”
Du Preez is expected to meet with director of cricket Enoch Nkwe tomorrow, while other meetings are set to take place over the coming days, as CSA puts in place a management structure for the T20 World Cup.
South Africa, runners-up at the previous tournament, plays the opening game of this year’s competition against England on October 3.
Despite the results being poor in India, Du Preez, who worked alongside Moreeng for four years as the team’s bowling coach, felt that given the changes in the management — including the appointment of Baakier Abrahams as batting coach and Bongani Ndaba as fielding coach — incremental improvements occurred. “I was concerned about all the changes,” he said.
“Some personalities work with changes, others struggle when there is change. But, whatever meetings we called, whatever we asked of the players, there was a positive response, and, for me that was a good sign.”
Du Preez highlighted the period after a tough loss in the Test match, which illustrated the squad’s character. “Even after the Test, where we put up a massive fight but didn’t get the result, what we needed from them was to fight again in the T20s, because, as I told them, it would make the tour complete. Whatever we asked, the response was positive, that was a tick in the right direction. There were a lot of positives, although the results might not suggest that.”
Du Preez believes the Proteas aren’t very reliant on right-handed opening batter Laura Wolvaardt, and all-rounder Marizanne Kapp, even if the scorecards suggests that remains the case. “We know what we have in them, and because they score runs so consistently, when they don’t it can create the sense [in the side] that ‘we might struggle now’. And it is not supposed to be like that — we back whoever we have,” he said.
“I looked at our batters at a practice in Chennai, and all of them were hitting the ball well. So we do ask ourselves ‘why don’t we perform like this in every game?’ With the new batting coach and the buy-in from the players, things are slowly falling into place, where we do not rely on just two players to perform. But on this tour a couple of players did perform and let’s hope that can continue.”
Besides spreading the load, Du Preez and Wolvaardt were pleased with the intent shown by the batters in their final series before the World Cup. “When you talk to players about a certain way to bat, in the beginning, [their response] would be: ‘This isn’t me,’ but then the moment there’s results, things become easier.
“With the way we want to play, there will be a game where we bomb out. But you are trying to get to the consistency where that happens one out of five times, and not every second or third game.”