Australia celebrate the wicket of Sophie Devine. Photo / Photosport
Australia celebrate the wicket of Sophie Devine. Photo / Photosport
The White Ferns are hopeful they’ll get a chance to make amends after a dismal Twenty20 World Cup opener against Australia, but first they’ll have to take care of business against less-credentialled opposition.
The Ferns slumped to a record 97-run defeat to Australia in South Africa this morningin a match skipper Sophie Devine said her side were “really poor in all facets”, putting them at the bottom of their five-team pool to begin the tournament.
However, unless Australia suffer a shock loss, victories for New Zealand against South Africa, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka will be enough for the Kiwis to advance to the semifinals, and veteran opener Suzie Bates believes the Ferns match up well against all three sides.
“The rest of the tournament is massive for us and you don’t want to drop two games, so we’ve got three games against teams we think we match up really well to.
“We know that in tournaments like this one loss doesn’t define you and you have no choice other than to pick yourselves up and show some resilience and make sure that we turn up.
“This group’s very good at that and I know there’ll be smiles and laughing on the bus still because that’s how we work best as a team - moving on pretty quickly.”
Bates knows better than most what is required at Twenty20 World Cups, having played at all eight iterations, and says the gulf between New Zealand and Australia is not as vast as it appeared today.
“The way they came out was strong – even after us taking an early wicket it was really impressive, and when they’ve got that depth in their line-up they can just keep coming hard at you, and we didn’t quite respond with the ball or in the field.
“They probably got 20-odd over par in that wicket and then losing two early wickets is never ideal when you’re chasing a big score.”
Suzie Bates was bowled first ball by Megan Schutt. Photo / Photosport
Those two wickets were the key scalps of Bates and Devine, both dismissed for golden ducks in the opening over, which was especially disappointing for Bates as she felt Australia’s 173-9 was chaseable in the conditions in Paarl.
“That can happen in T20 cricket when you are chasing. You’ve got to keep going hard and sometimes you can fall short, but we’re really disappointed with that.
“I thought the outfield got quicker as the lights came on and it raced away, and if we get one of our top five set against any team, we believe we can chase down that.
“It was only eight [runs an over required] - we’ve made it probably look like we needed 20 but that’s all in reflection and the nature of these tournaments is we have to move on really fast.”
The first chance for amends comes against South Africa on Tuesday morning, and Bates is already plotting a path to the semifinals, and hoping to go one further than that to get a chance at revenge against Australia.
“We’ve got a big game against South Africa but if we win that we’re on track to where we want to be for the semifinals.
“We know we can compete with [Australia] much better than that, so fingers crossed we get another opportunity in this tournament.”
