Sri Lanka Women vs South Africa Women, 18th Match - Live Cricket Score, Commentary

Finally, a result in a game played at Colombo! All the hopes were almost done and dusted but the rain relented around 8:00PM local time and then the groundsmen took charge to ensure the ground was game ready. SL toppled the 100 mark post the break but the score was just not good enough for the SA team who won without even losing a wicket. They have almost sealed their place in the semis with this win and have given their NRR a facelift as well. SL have two games left and will look to win both of them to stand a chance. We will have our chance to entertain you tomorrow. Bye bye for now. Take care!

Laura Wolvaardt: Very pleased to get a game in the end. Bit of a frustrating day, obviously sitting on the side for four hours, and then it stopped raining about ten minutes before the cut-off time. So very glad that it worked out this well and we were able to get onto the field. Yeah, it's something we've definitely been speaking about (on the top-order). I know we haven't had our best tournament so far as an opening pair together. So really nice that we were able to put on a 100-run stand today and spend some time in the middle. We're still searching for the perfect game as a team. Sometimes, the top-order has been firing, sometimes only the middle order has been firing. So we just need a game where it all comes together. Probably with the ball, we can look to be better in the death phase. We were a bit better today with that. It's tough to stay switched on (during rain breaks). You can see when we came on after the four-hour break, we had a bit of a nervy start. We probably weren't as switched on as we should have been those first two overs back on the field. But we were able to regroup, take a lot of wickets, which I think helped the run rate as well.

Chamari Athapaththu: Unfortunately, the results haven't gone our way in this World Cup. We have two more games left, so we focus on the next two games. We try to play our best and finish this tournament very high. That's what I want to do. We talk about those things in the dressing room, we decided to bat first because we had a good game before this against New Zealand. So that's why we decided to bat first. It's too hard to grip (the wet ball), especially for the spinners. Our team depends on the spin, so we struggle a little bit. These kinds of things happen in the middle. Unfortunately, we can't control those things. As a team, we have to play our positive cricket. That's the most important thing in the middle. So, fearless cricket and smart options are most important as a batting unit.

-- South Africa’s sixth 10-wicket win in Women’s ODIs, second in World Cups after they’d gunned down the 49-run target with 262 balls to spare vs WI-W at Leicester in 2017.

-- This is South Africa’s joint-longest winning streak in Women’s WC; they’d won four on the bounce in the 2022 edition.

SA openers vs spin today (by footwork)
Front: 14(17), SR: 82.35
Back: 29(27), SR: 107.40
Down the track: 41(19), SR: 215.78
Other: 4(3): 133.33

Most century stands for the opening wicket in Women’s ODIs
10 - Belinda Clark, Lisa Keightley (AUS-W)
7 - Lizelle Lee, Laura Wolvaardt (SA-W)
7 - Rachael Haynes, Alyssa Healy (AUS-W)
7 - Tazmin Brits, Laura Wolvaardt (SA-W)

Highest partnerships aggregates in a calendar year in Women’s ODIs
1332 - Smriti Mandhana, Pratika Rawal (IND-W) in 2025
967 - Tazmin Brits, Laura Wolvaardt (SA-W) in 2025
905 - Belinda Clark, Lisa Keightley (AUS-W) in 2000
834 - Suzie Bates, Rachel Priest (NZ-W) in 2015
775 - Rachael Haynes, Alyssa Healy (AUS-W) in 2022

Laura Wolvaardt, Player of the Match: Very relieved that we got a game there in the end. It was a frustrating day, sitting on the side for four or five hours, but lovely to get the two points. (Approach while batting) We just said it's a normal T20 game. We wanted to get ahead of that rate as soon as we could. We didn't want to leave it close to the end again. We wanted to have a convincing win this time. So, just trying to go out there with the same intent we would in T20 cricket, and glad that we batted through. That ball was a bar of soap when we were bowling at the end there. But it did come on quite nicely off the wicket, so it was nice when we were batting, not so much when we were fielding. (On her captaincy) Pretty tricky, especially with the rain delay. I haven't had too much experience with that in my captaincy career. But it worked out quite nicely for us. Obviously, our normal death bowlers had bowled out quite early, so I had to bowl a bit of spin at the end, which was a bit different for us. A lot of preparation from a captaincy point of view. But when I'm batting, I'm not thinking about any of that. I'm just trying to watch the ball as hard as I can.

23:01 Local Time, 17:31 GMT, 23:01 IST: South Africa jump up to the second spot with this win and have one foot in the semi-finals. The forecast for this match was always dodgy but Sri Lanka opted to bat. They lost two wickets in the powerplay and were 46/2 at the end of the 12th over when the heavens opened up. There was no play for five hours but the rain relented just in time for a 20-over match to take place. The Lankans had to bat aggressively in their remaining eight overs and they added 59 runs to finish on 105/7. While the South African fielders struggled to cope with the slippery ball, their openers were happy to face it chasing a revised target of 121. Captain Laura Wolvaardt was the aggressor from the word go and ensured that her team was always ahead of the rate. Brits played the second fiddle but she too showed her hitting prowess. Both the openers brought up their fifties as the Proteas wrapped up the proceedings with 31 balls to spare.