Posted by You do wonder why England didn’t stick with the ‘bowling South Africa out for 69’ ploy that had served them so well in the group stages. Quite possibly, they tried, but for some reason Laura Wolvaardt wasn’t inclined to go along with it this time.
For a sense of how the England v South Africa semi-final played out, you could do worse than look at the top order partnerships for the two teams.
Tell you what, we’ll rank them for you, from smallest to largest:
- 0 runs: Tammy Beaumont and Amy Jones (England)
- 0 runs: Tammy Beaumont and Heather Knight (England)
- 0 runs: Laura Wolvaardt and Anneke Bosch (South Africa)
- 1 run (a wide): Tammy Beaumont and Nat Sciver-Brunt (England)
- 3 runs: Laura Wolvaardt and Suné Luus (South Africa)
- 116 runs: Laura Wolvaardt and Tazmin Brits (South Africa)
Wolvaardt just went on and on from there. For a brief moment it seemed possible that as well as scoring more than half her team’s runs, she might also account for more than half the runs in the entire match.
England fought back a bit, but only really in that rather pointless ‘making a knock-out defeat a bit less embarrassing’ kind of way.
Their middle-order hasn’t really made any runs this tournament, so significantly lengthening its odds of success with the sizeable target Wolvaardt had set, and by then falling to 1-3 didn’t especially help its cause.
Charlotte Edwards’ post-match/tournament assessment was one of those quietly sweeping indictments where it slowly dawns on you that she’s not happy about very much at all really.
“Our batting has to improve – certainly that middle order and playing against spin; certainly slow spin – and obviously bowling across all phases.”
At least she didn’t mention the fielding. We don’t believe they dropped Wolvaardt until she had 128, so we guess that’s progress.
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