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Marizanne Kapp is not perturbed by the Proteas’ scrappy performances in the T20 World Cup and believes it may be beneficial that they are yet to show their best form.In contrast to South Africa, England have been in scintillating form and dominated their group rivals on the march to Thursday’s semifinal between the two teams at The Oval.“I’m always scared when everything goes your way and you just smash everyone. I’m more afraid of that actually than reaching the semifinals the way we have played. We know we’ve not been at our best and we can openly say that,” said Kapp. Kapp disagreed with her new-ball partner Shabnim Ismail who claimed on Sunday that the Proteas were only playing at about 75% of their abilities. “I feel like we’ve been performing at 60%, but that excites me,” said Kapp.“I know this team, big players like Wolvie [Laura Wolvaardt] haven’t hit their straps yet. We have a lot of players who are due, which is exciting because the best is yet to come. We are not close to playing our best cricket and hopefully we’re saving it for the semifinal.” England have trounced the other teams in Group 2, including fellow semifinalists the West Indies. Last Saturday at the Oval they smashed defending champions New Zealand by nine wickets, reaching a target of 164 with 16 balls to spare. By comparison, the Proteas have stumbled horribly when chasing modest totals against Pakistan and last Sunday at Lord’s against Bangladesh. Besides Laura Wolvaardt not being at her best, the other batters have struggled to manage their scoring rates, having played on sluggish surfaces and become tied down by spinners. The Oval has provided pitches with more pace, but the Proteas haven’t played there yet in the tournament. “It’s usually very flat and the outfield is extremely quick. I think it will be a high-scoring game,” said Kapp, who has played for the Oval Invincibles in The Hundred competition. In addition, the Proteas also have the services of Johann Myburgh, coach of the Surrey women’s team, at their disposal, and for those who haven’t played at the south London venue, he’ll be a valuable source of information. South Africa have had a good recent record in tournaments against England, beating them in the semifinals of the T20 World Cup in Cape Town in 2023 and at the same stage in last year’s ODI tournament in India.“In the past our main goal was to reach a semifinal and then we used to get to that semifinal and it was almost as if we didn’t know what to do,” said Kapp. “We’ve moved on, we’ve started reaching finals. “A lot of us are so used to playing [in big matches], not only for South Africa but in all these T20 Leagues now. Personally I enjoy it a lot. There will be nerves, it’s a World Cup semifinal and you want to make your country and family proud. “The nerves and stress are a little bit less compared to the past when we reached our first semifinals.”
