ICC Women's World Cup 2017: 5 things that went wrong for South Africa in the semi-final
The hosts, England, on Tuesday, booked their berth in the final of the ICC Women’s World Cup 2017 after they beat South Africa in the first Semi Final at Bristol. South Africa, on the other hand, had to deal with another heartbreak as they found themselves on the wrong side of a World Cup Knock out match once again.
Batting first, South Africa could only manage 221/6 in their fifty overs. Mignon du Preez top scored with an unbeaten 75 while Laura Wolvaardt played a decent knock of 66 as well. Meanwhile, each of the English bowlers in Anya Shrubsole, Natalie Sciver, Heather Knight and Jenny Gunn picked up a wicket each.
England began the chase on a positive note with the openers, Lauren Winfield and Tammy Beaumont, putting up an opening stand of 48 runs at a run-a-ball. However, they departed soon and the innings was recovered by a superb partnership between Sarah Taylor and Heather Knight.
The South African bowlers, though, came back into the match strongly as England lost wickets at regular intervals. The match went down to the wire as Anya Shrubsole hit the winning runs on the penultimate delivery. England thus won the match by two wickets.
There were a lot of things that went wrong for South Africa in this match. Let us have a look at five of those major things they did wrong:
#1 Early wickets set them on the back foot
South Africa had been heavily reliant on Lizelle Lee to get them off to quick starts in all the previous matches. Laura Wolvaardt had always been the one to play the second fiddle to her. And once Lee got out cheaply against England on Tuesday, South Africa found runs hard to come by.
The Proteas were on a score of 21 in the sixth over when Anya Shrubsole cleaned Lee up for an individual score of 7 (13). Wolvaardt continued the innings with Trisha Cheney afterwards but at a pretty slow run rate. They could only crawl to a score of 48 in the 12th over before Cherry (15) was out stumped off Natalie Sciver's bowling. South Africa thus found themselves in deep trouble being on 48/2.