Proteas women must ‘keep moving forward’, says captain Wolvaardt

2026-03-27 - 07:30

With a quick turnaround, captain Laura Wolvaardt says the Proteas women need to pick themselves up, brush themselves off and look ahead as they prepare for a three-match one-day international (ODI) series against New Zealand starting in Christchurch on Sunday (3am start). Having been handed a 4-1 defeat in the five-match T20 International series which ended on Wednesday, Wolvaardt admitted the SA team had not hit their straps. Aside from needing to tidy up their bowling, and sort out their sloppy fielding, the skipper also felt they could perform a lot better with the bat. But she believed there was enough time to improve in all facets ahead of the T20 World Cup in England and Wales in June. “I feel like we’ve done well in different sections, but then one game this goes well and something else goes badly. We haven’t really brought it all together yet,” Wolvaardt said. “I think we’ve just lost our way a bit with the bat, and I know we’re a much better batting unit than that. “I think we just have a few batters who are out of form at the same time, which is a bit unfortunate. But I do think we have enough time to turn it around before the World Cup.” Looking ahead They couldn’t allow their poor performances in the T20 campaign to get them down, Wolvaardt said, as they aimed to hit back in the ODI series. It was important they turned things around and performed well in the 50-over games, which formed part of the ICC Women’s Championship that served as the qualifying competition for the 2029 World Cup. “We don’t have too much time to be down about it. We can reflect on where we need to be better, and then it’s full steam ahead in a new format,” Wolvaardt said. “We’ll take our learnings and our reflections, and then we’ve got to keep moving forward because there’s always more cricket to come and more to play for, so we just need to get the girls in the most positive mindset we can before the next game.”