Day 73: South Africa are looking to move to the next level

 Sometimes you are better off disregarding the ICC ODI rankings; they are complicated and can fudge who the best teams are. I think right now, it would be difficult to disagree with them. Australia are top by a decent margin, and then there is England, South Africa battling it out for the second spot. New Zealand and West Indies trail some way behind them.

South Africa have out of the top ten teams to have played the most games. It is their regular schedule that has helped their players form a tight-knit squad.

They have won a series in India with a game to spare and missing key players in their line-up, including Dane van Niekerk and her replacement Sunne Luus. The only other side to come away from India with a series is Australia.

Laura Wolvaardt continues to impress, and with the added burden of captaincy in the last two games has lead from the front.

All the top four of South Africa’s passed fifty today, with Lara Goodall (59*) and Mignon du Preez (61) built on Wolvaardt and Lizelle Lee’s 119 runs first-wicket partnership. It was an imposing target for South Africa, and many teams may have crumbled under the pressure of maintaining the chase.

When you consider Luus and Van Niekerk are to comeback into the batting line-up, South Africa can become a real force in international cricket. They should be targeting at least the semi-final at every major tournament from now on.

They can’t be that far off reaching a final. In their previous semi-finals, England at Bristol 2017 and Australia at the SCG in 2020, they narrowly missed out to the eventual winners on both occasions.

With that experience behind them, they will go into 2022 confident that they can bring back a piece of silverware somewhere.

As for India is where do they go from here? Do they need to ask some of the players they recently discarded to come back? Maybe. What perhaps they need to do is learn from the international sides ahead of them.

A women’s IPL is a must, a strong domestic structure and given all the support it can to thrive is also a given. India’s national team also needs to play more matches, not just in India but worldwide. If they are invited by any other side to play, they should take it.

It would be a shame if India could not build on their recent success in reaching two World Cup finals, not because they haven’t got the players, but because they weren’t given a chance to build on some firm foundations.