Rampant Australia stand in South Africa’s path to glory
It isn’t often that bits of paper stuck to windows are worth quoting, but these are extraordinary times. “Sold out,” read the signs on the ticket booths at Newlands on Saturday afternoon – more than 24 hours before South Africa will take on Australia in the women’s T20 World Cup final. Cape Town isn’t a metropolis like Mumbai or London, where there’s a good chance more people than are needed to fill the ground are going about their business in the surrounding streets on any given match day. It also isn’t Melbourne, which although has a population comparable to Cape Town’s also has the MCG, with its exponentially bigger capacity than Newlands, which suffers from the added disadvantage of being hemmed in by concrete neighbours on all sides. Unless you live or work nearby, getting there is difficult. But Saturday morning produced queues outside Newlands, that snaked many metres down the pavement to the end of the block, of aspirant spectators for today’s showdown. If you know South Africans and their idea of sport worth paying money to watch, especially here in the leafy, genteel heart of the patriarchy, you know they wouldn’t ordinarily spend a weekend morning waiting patiently in the summer sun trying to buy access to a game unless it is to be played by men. The lines wouldn’t have formed had South Africa not earned an unlikely but deserved victory over England in their semi-final at the same ground on Friday. That made Sune Luus’ team the first senior side from her country, men or women, to reach a World Cup final in any format. Like making it to Newlands, getting to the decider hasn’t been simple for the South Africans. They shambled to two defeats in their four group games, putting in performances that would have buried them had they played like that in one more match. Mostly, their batters couldn’t match their bowlers. On Friday, bat met ball on something like equal terms and the result was astounding. Having scored a decent 164/4 – comfortably their highest total in their last seven T20Is in which they have batted first – South Africa took all eight England wickets to fall for 100 runs and won by six runs. Their opponents on Sunday couldn’t have taken a more different route to the final. Australia were on auto-pilot throughout the group stage, where they never looked like losing. Only in their semi were they stretched. They made a serious 172/4, which India came within five runs of overhauling. The wider narrative tells a similar story. Before Friday, South Africa had known the disappointment of five failed white-ball semifinals. There have been 19 women’s global tournaments and the Aussies have been to the final in 12 of them. Or maybe 13: there was no final in the first two ODI World Cups, in 1973 and 1978, which were decided on points. But England and Australia were the only unbeaten teams going into the last match in 1978. So it is considered a de facto final. Of those 13 tournaments, Australia have won 12. If David versus Goliath needs a reboot to bring it up to speed with an age in which women are taken more seriously in every sphere of life – and the gods know it does – this match fits the template. The key contest looks likely to be Australia’s batters against South Africa’s pace bowlers, but the way the home side’s batters dealt with England’s crack attack says that theory could be in for a shake-up. Suddenly Tamzin Brits is five runs ahead of Alyssa Healy as the tournament’s highest remaining run-scorer, albeit from one fewer innings. But Ash Gardner is the leading wicket-taker left in the competition and no-one has a better economy rate than Grace Harris. Only the stupid money would not be on Australia to clinch another title. They have too many threats in too many places, who have delivered accordingly, not to be outright favourites. Thing is, much the same could have been said about England before the semi-final. They encountered a South Africa team who had finally got over themselves well enough to play properly. A jam-packed Newlands will be willing them to do so one more time with feeling on Sunday. Men might form most of the crowd, as they have in the past. The difference this time is that they won’t only watch a cricket match, or even a cricket match played by women. They will attend history in the making, and they will hope as hard as they dare, from the bottom of their hoary, hairy hearts, that they are on the side of the team who write it. South Africa Possible XI: Laura Wolvaardt, Tazmin Brits, Marizanne Kapp, Sune Luus (capt), Chloe Tryon, Anneke Bosch, Nadine de Klerk, Sinalo Jafta, Shabnim Ismail, Ayabonga Khaka, Nonkululeko Mlaba Australia Possible XI: Alyssa Healy, Beth Mooney, Meg Lanning (capt), Ashleigh Gardner, Grace Harris, Ellyse Perry, Tahlia McGrath, Georgia Wareham, Jess Jonassen, Megan Schutt, Darcie Brown
