Indore, Oct 24 (IANS) After a heavy defeat to Australia in their final league match of the Women’s ODI World Cup, South Africa captain Laura Wolvaardt said the team would focus on the positives and quickly move on as they prepare for the semifinals despite suffering an embarrassing defeat to Australia in Indore on Saturday.

Leg-spinner Alana King’s historic 7-18 rolled over South Africa for 97 in 24 overs. Beth Mooney’s 42 and Georgia Voll’s 38 not out guided Australia to a seven-wicket win to seal the top spot in the points table. Alana was named Player of the Match for her magical spell at Holkar Cricket Stadium in Indore.

South Africa continued their losing streak against Australia in the World Cup as it was their ninth successive loss against the defending champions in the mega tournament.

“Yeah, definitely not the way we would have liked to end the group stages. We didn’t have enough runs with the bat. But I think we’ve done a lot of good things throughout this tournament, so we’ll just focus on that heading into the semifinal. Yeah, I didn’t think it was the worst thing in the world (having to bat first). We know it’s something we would have liked to practice again – obviously, the last time we did it didn’t go so well. But yeah, I thought it was a decent wicket to bat on. I thought King bowled excellently; we’d spoken about facing her quite a lot, but that didn’t quite go to plan. She bowled really well,” said Wolvaardt in the post-match presentation.

It wasn’t a bad start for South Africa as Wolvaardt and Tazmin Brits stitched a 32-run opening partnership before Alana wreaked havoc in the match. Proteas captain played a 26-ball 31 knock studded with seven fours and was looking confident in the middle.

“Yeah, it’s nice. I feel like I’m timing it well. So, yeah, I’ll try to forget about today a little bit and just focus on all the good we’ve been doing. Yeah, it’s very nice. It’s been a real team effort this tournament. It’s been great to see different players putting their hands up, and the bowlers too. Unfortunately, no one was able to do that tonight, really, but hopefully in the semifinal one or two players can step up again,” she said.

“Yeah, after that game it was about putting it behind us as quickly as we could, while still learning from what we did wrong – things like getting beaten on the inside edge and so on. But at the same time, it was important to forget about it and move forward. I think it’ll be a similar thing tomorrow: analyse what we could’ve done better tonight, then move straight ahead to that semi-final. Maybe tonight’s loss is just what we need to wake ourselves up a bit,” Wolvaardt said.

On facing England in the semifinal, against whom they collapsed for 69 in their tournament opener. The opening batter looked confident to take the challenge upfront and get over the line this time around to seal a spot in the final. “Not really – you can’t control that sort of thing. We’re happy to play England. We’re kind of used to meeting them in semi-finals at World Cups, so hopefully this time we can come out on top.”

–IANS

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