South Africa captain Laura Wolvaardt admitted that she did not expect Shafali Verma to bowl and have the kind of impact that she did in the Women’s ODI World Cup final on Sunday. The 21-year-old claimed figures of 2/36 in seven overs, taking the wickets of Sune Luus and Marizanne Kapp to derail the Protean chase of 299 runs.
Wolvaardt admitted that it was frustrating to give away those wickets to Verma and be forced to stay cautious not to add to her tally.
“Yeah, didn’t really expect her to bowl much today. So a bit of a surprise factor from them. She just kind of bowled front of the hand and really slow and was able to pick up a couple of wickets. I think. Yeah. In a World Cup final you don’t want to lose wickets to a part-time bowler. But frustrating that she was able to pick up two, two big ones as well, and yeah, then almost had to own the side of caution to not give her any more wickets,” Wolvaardt said in the post-match press conference on Sunday.
The right-hander admitted that Verma bowled well, but added that the team had not planned for her to bowl in the lead-up to the final.
“So yeah, she bowled pretty well. Frustrating I guess because it’s not really the, the person you plan for. But yeah, she played well,” she said.
The 21-year-old bowled a fair bit in the training sessions leading up to the semi-final against Australia, and that came to good use in the final on Sunday, when she broke a growing stand of 52 runs for the third wicket between Wolvaardt and Luus, which pegged South Africa back in the chase.
Indian captain Harmanpreet Kaur later said that Shafali had agreed to bowl 10 overs if the need arose, adding that giving her the ball was a gut call.
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“Actually, when Shafali joined the team, we were missing the overs from Pratika. So, when Shafali came in, we saw that she was bowling a lot of overs in domestic cricket. So, Sir and I spoke to her about it, and she said, “Sir, I’m ready for 10 overs.” That shows how confident she was to bowl. Today, when that partnership started in the middle, suddenly I got the thought that I should give Shafali a try to see what happens. It was a gut feeling,” Kaur said at the post-match press conference.
