Batting was Achilles heel

St Lucia – The Proteas finished off a largely unsatisfactory Women’s World T20 with a consolation 30-run win over Bangladesh in St Lucia on Sunday – a tournament performance which was difficult to accept for SA skipper Dane van Niekerk (below).

The win left South Africa third in Group A, but pushed winless Bangladesh down to fifth with Sri Lanka in fourth. That means Bangladesh, like Ireland in Group B, will have to go through the qualifier route again to get into the next edition of the World T20.

For Van Niekerk, who opened the batting with Lizelle Lee in this game in a change from the template, the win was welcome, but didn’t change the overall mood in the camp.

“Obviously it’s a relief to have won and get a bit of confidence. But I think the team is still quite disappointed. I saw everybody’s faces after the game. There’s a lot of disappointment around in the camp. And it’s going to hurt for a bit,” she said.

“We need to get a bit more mentally strong. These four teams that went through to the semifinals have shown why they deserve to be there. They played incredible cricket and we lacked in the batting department. I’ll never fault our bowling. I think our bowling stands up to any team in the world.”

If South Africa had lost to Bangladesh by a big enough margin, they might have finished bottom of the Group A table, and joined Ireland in the qualifiers in a couple of years’ time.

“No team wants to go to qualifiers, and I’m glad we dodged that bullet,” Van Niekerk said. “I guess we don’t enjoy going to qualifiers. So, to not go is a relief. We just spoke about it. So hopefully, we can, as a unit, go back to the drawing board and see where we’ve gone wrong and try and rectify those wrongs.”

Despite a lot of experience and class in the ranks, the team just couldn’t put runs on the board, leaving the bowlers with too much to do too often.