South Africa played its part and confirmed that India must take down Australia at Lord’s to qualify for the Women’s Twenty20 World Cup semifinals on Sunday.
On the last day of the group stage, India, the ODI world champion, and South Africa, the finalist at the last two T20 World Cups, were fighting for the fourth and last semifinal spot. Unbeaten Australia was safely through in their group barring a massive meltdown.
South Africa labored to beat Bangladesh by four wickets in the first match of the Lord’s doubleheader.
India remained ahead of South Africa on net run rate but had to beat Australia in the afternoon to overtake South Africa in the table.
By coincidence, the best batters on both teams were out to the first ball of each innings. Juairiya Ferdous swung at and missed Marizanne Kapp and gave the South African pacer her 100th T20 wicket. South Africa captain Laura Wolvaardt was bowled between bat and pad by Marufa Akter. The pair of opening ducks happened only once before at a T20 World Cup in 2018 between Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
Bangladesh chose to bat and made only 117-5 in the face of quality bowling by Kapp (1-9) Shabnim Ismail (1-15) and Nonkululeko Mlaba (2-22).
Sobhana Mostary top-scored for Bangladesh with 42 and captain Nigar Sultana was 32 not out off 20 to become the team’s leading tournament scorer.
Annerie Dercksen and Tazmin Brits gave South Africa a better start but wickets fell regularly enough to make the chasers sweat. Dercksen was caught behind in the 15th over, Kapp was run out in the 18th and Nadine de Klerk fell in the 19th. It took Chloe Tryon to grab the win with two miscued shots.
“We seem to always do this but we take the win,” Kapp said. “A win is a win. Even if it was very scrappy.”
