Photo Credit: ICC
Meg Lanning identified a relaxed atmosphere as the key behind Australia’s superb ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup form after her century inspired a five-wicket victory over South Africa.
Lanning was masterful as she anchored Australia’s chase of 272, ending on 135 not out to continue her side’s unbeaten run and maintain their place at the top of the table.
The Australian bench were shown joking around, including giving the robot cam a makeover, content in the knowledge that the chase was in safe hands.
“As a team, we’re quite relaxed,” Lanning said. “We’re switched on when we need to be and we enjoy cricket. We enjoy being around each other and that’s the best part of this team.
“Even though it is at times tense out on the field, when you see that the bench has a relaxed mindset, that puts you at ease out in the middle.
“I didn’t see that today but it’s nice to hear. I think the more we enjoy our cricket and have smiles on our faces, the better we play.”
South Africa’s batting effort was led by Laura Wolvaardt as she made her fourth consecutive score over 50 in the World Cup but again fell short of a ton as she was dismissed for 90.
Proteas captain Sune Luus also contributed a half-century as South Africa posted what Lanning believed to be a par score, even if the bowling didn’t always seem to click.
She said: “I actually thought we bowled ok, there was a little bit in the wicket early, we would have loved to take a few more wickets.
“But what we did do is keep the run rate under control and then when we were able to take some wickets towards the back end that helped contain them a bit.
“At halfway we thought 270 was about par, but we did feel like the wicket was getting better as the day went on, so we were certainly confident about chasing it.”
Wolvaardt and Lizelle Lee put South Africa in a good position, adding 88 runs for the first wicket before Wolvaardt combined with Luus to move the Proteas to 209 for three with 7.3 overs remaining.
Chloe Tryon made 17 off nine balls as she and Marizanne Kapp pushed South Africa past 270 for the first time in the tournament but she admitted their change bowlers let them down in their defence of 271.
Tryon said: “We couldn’t have asked for a better start than that, Lizelle and Wolfie [Wolvaardt], really set it up nicely for us.
“And then for Sune to get a really good partnership with Wolfie until the end, we really couldn’t ask for a better start from them.
“We lost a couple of wickets towards the back end but we were still happy with 270-plus.
“It’s really good to see the girls taking their responsibility as batters and getting to that score, we want to score that consistently.
“With regards to bowling, we couldn’t have asked for a better start again, Marizanne and [Shabnim] Ismail bowled really well. I just felt that as bowlers we didn’t back them up in the middle overs.
“[There were] too many loose balls, both sides of the wicket, it’s really hard to set fields for that.
“We kind of got Meg Lanning going and once you get her going, you can’t stop her. Once we got the opportunities with the ball, they were a little bit too late, and we missed them as well.
“It is very unfortunate and I think they will be disappointed with the second half.”
