Africa-Press – South-Africa. The Proteas didn’t get their tour of Ireland off to the best of starts on Friday, as they suffered a 10-run defeat to the hosts in the first T20 international.
Speaking before the second game scheduled for Monday, Proteas’ vice-captain, Chloe Tryon believes the team need to up their performance significantly if they hope to get back into the series.
Monday’s must-win encounter gets underway at 17:30 SA time, and Tryon says the team is unhappy with how the first match went.
“We are obviously very disappointed at the way we played,” commented Tryon when assessing the opening match.
“We kind of went through the motions with our bowling, but I was happy with the way we came back in the last seven overs in the game. We kind of let it drag a bit too much, we didn’t adapt to the conditions as quick as possible, and they played really well and rocked up to the game.
“For us, it’s about pitching up. It’s making sure we play our best cricket as we were definitely under par, so we need to make sure when we going out to bowl, we go out with intent, bowling to our fields. When we are batting, we must have really good intent, look to rotate the strike, look for boundary options and that we are getting those partnerships in the middle.
“That’s definitely something we would like to work on going into the next game,” Tryon said.
The victory in the series-opener was Ireland’s only second T20I win over South Africa in 11 attempts, with the first one coming during the previous tour in 2016, where the two opponents drew the shorter format one-all.
Tryon, however, did take positives in the defeat, particularly the bowling of Nadine de Klerk and Tumi Sekhukhune.
Sekhukhune recorded her personal best figures of 3 / 32 in T20I cricket, while de Klerk proved to be the most economical bowler, going only for 1 / 17 in her four overs.
“I am very proud of them,” Tryon stated.
“If you look at the way they have been playing, getting these opportunities, it is really important to put up your hand and give the selectors a bit of a headache. They are not usually in the starting 11, and you can see they’ve been working really hard back home, and the hard work is showing.
“I am really excited to see how they go for the rest of the series, and you can see they are eager to play, they really want to represent their country, and I couldn’t be more proud of how they’ve developed,” the vice-captain added.
Following tomorrow’s encounter, the T20I series will conclude with a third and final match on Wednesday, 8 June, with the encounter also taking place at Pembroke Cricket Club.
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