South Africa women’s team beats Bangladesh women by 10 wickets in ICC Women’s World T20 2023 at the New Lands Cricket Ground, South Africa on Wednesday. Toss was won by Bangladesh and they choose to bat first, New Land Cricket Ground is ideal for bowling. Seamers and swingers will have a huge role to play in the match. Bangladesh Women’s team hasn’t been performing well in most of the previous matches and they are positioned at the bottom of the points table. Being 4th in the points table, South Africa marked a good margin win to rise to the second position to go for the semi-finals. South Africa will be facing England in the semi-finals on Friday.
Bangladesh was able to score 113 runs in total. This was achieved mostly through aggressive running behind the wickets, no player in the team scored more than 30 runs except Nigar Sultana. There were some changes made in the lineup initially. Captain Nigar Sultana scored 30 runs, this was the top score among Bangladesh’s team in that match. South Africa was able to chase down the target of 114 runs with ease, they finished the game in 17.5 overs. Arguably, it was an easy score, Bangladesh bowlers did give a tough fight in the initial 10 overs. If they have taken some wickets and maintained that phase then the match result would have been different.
Bangladesh women’s team batted first and it didn’t go well. They had a poor start, the run rate was low initially, and there was an attempt to improve the score during the middle phase but still, scores remained low. The captain scored 30 runs and no other batter scored that many runs throughout the match. In the middle phase, Shobhana Mostary and Nigar Sultana did try to take control of the match but their effort wasn’t enough to win the match.
The pitch was supportive to the bowlers but still, Bangladesh bowlers did not perform quite well. They didn’t have a good target to start with, so there was immense pressure on the bowling side. The spinners did attempt to take over some wickets but unfortunately, they couldn’t. There were some missed catching opportunities as well. Nigar Sulthana mentioned that the score was a very difficult one for the bowlers. Without a higher target, the bowling team won’t be successful. She also acknowledges the fans who have been supporting the team despite the failures.
Bangladesh was underperforming the whole series and they couldn’t even achieve one victory in the whole series. The chance of success was high on South Africa’s side. Captain Nigar Sultana said that they would have to score above 140 runs to have some chance of winning against South Africa but things did not go by that plan. A match against a team like South Africa is a challenging game and Bangladesh did put up a fight. We cannot say that South Africa had an easy win. The initial 10 overs were clearly a challenge and we might even start thinking that Bangladesh is about to win.
Laura Wolvaardt was declared the Player of the Match. South Africa also had a bad start, they were struggling to score runs till the initial 10 overs but later on, the players pushed through the scores. Both the openers, Laura Wolvaardt and Tazmin Brits scored a half-century. The initial 10 overs were like a mental test for South Africa, they could only score 43 runs.
For a team like South Africa, achieving this target was pretty much an easy task. The openers did a fantastic job, both openers scored their half-century while chasing the target.
