‘Scrappy’ South Africa trying to find their natural selves in T20 World Cup: Klaasen

South Africa have won four out of the four matches that they have played in the T20 World Cup 2024. While unbeaten, the Aiden Markram-led side have been far from convincing. Against USA, in their first Super 8 game, South Africa’s bowling failed and they had to grind it out in the final two overs to win by 18 runs. Wicketkeeper-batter Heinrch Klaasen acknowledged that the team had not been convincing as a unit, but said that it was a big positive that SA showed the mentality to grind out wins.

Speaking in the pre-match press conference before their second Super 8 game against England, Klaasen credited the bowlers and hope that the batting unit will find their natural selves in better pitches of West Indies.

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“We had four scrappy games that we pulled through. It wasn’t pretty. Our bowlers bowled incredibly well in those four or five games now. So, the batters just find a way to scrap and we had to adjust our game plans a little bit. Hopefully on better wickets we can find our swings and be our natural selves. So that’s the one positive that’s still out there for us to go find. But the rest of the way we’ve been playing, the way we’ve been grafting and adapting to conditions is brilliant and that shows the maturity in the group as well,” Klaasen said in the pre-match press conference.

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“So, yeah, we obviously are looking forward to that perfect game, but hopefully that will happen the longer the tournament goes on for us and find it when it really matters,” he further added.

The explosive middle-order batter acknowledged the threat that England possessed in their batting line-up. England are coming off a terrific win against co-hosts West Indies in the Super 8 stage. A win for England against South Africa will make them the favourites to qualify for the semi-finals of the tournament.

“Yeah, they’ve (England) had a different tournament with a lot of rain and rain affected games and but they’re extremely dangerous side. They’ve got a lot of match winners and we need to be aware of that and play our big moments better than what they do, but Cricket is a funny game. Like we saw this whole World Cup so far. So hopefully we can continue our trend of playing good cricket under pressure and it will be fantastic if we, as South Africa, can go two out of two and hopefully close the spots for the semi-finals for ourselves,” Klaasen said.

England will play South Africa at the Daren Sammy Cricket Stadium in St Lucia. The match is expected to be a high-scoring game.