Oman have been competitive against both Namibia and Australia, but are still stuck at the bottom of the group table

Shashank Kishore08-Jun-20243:41

O’Brien: Oman could be Scotland’s toughest game yet

Match details

Oman vs Scotland
North Sound, 1pm local time

Big picture – Scotland must be wondering what they have to do to be noticed at the T20 World Cup.Their terrific win over Namibia on a slow Kensington Oval deck was sandwiched somewhere between USA’s Super Over stunner over Pakistan, Canada trumping Ireland, and Afghanistan steamrolling New Zealand.Two nights prior to that result against Namibia, Scotland had England sweating in the rain. And on Sunday, when most eyes will be on , Scotland will take on fellow Associates Oman in Antigua.Related

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But, whether in the spotlight or not, they are where they would have liked to be, and could be closer to their target after the Oman game.Before that, though, they will keep a close eye on Saturday’s game between Australia and England. Scotland, No. 1 in the group prior to that match, will know that a win over Oman will help them control their destiny going into their final group fixture against Australia.George Munsey fired against England, taking down pace and spin alike, overcoming the slowness of the surface with ease. In their second game, Richie Berrington and Michael Leask stood up under pressure to give Scotland the win after a potentially tricky chase of 156.Oman, meanwhile, haven’t performed half as badly as the table suggests. Two losses in two games can be a bitter pill to swallow, but they have competed hard in both. They showed admirable pluck in taking the game against Namibia into a Super Over, and then had Australia in a stranglehold for 14 overs, before it fell apart.One complete performance is what Oman will be after to stay alive, even if only mathematically. Scotland will want to prevent that. This could be a cracking contest between two sides that are ambitious, talented, and looking to hit a higher level.George Munsey is the key man in the Scotland top order•Getty Images

Form guide

Scotland WLWLW
Oman LLLWW

In the spotlight

One of the very versatile George Munsey‘s strengths is that he can take down spin, like he showed against England. He can play the reverse-sweeps and switch-hits as comfortably as he can hit through the line on good decks. Oman’s attack is spin-heavy, and Munsey’s approach up top could set the tempo as they chase victory to push for the Super Eight stage.A clean striker in club cricket, Kashyap Prajapati made heads turn three years ago when he struck a 138-ball 146 against a Mumbai squad in India. That knock paved the way for his international debut. Since then, he’s largely been hit and miss as his modest T20 record suggests. With scores of 7 and 0 in his first two games, he needs a big score to justify the faith the team management has shown in him.

Team news

Oman have been three down inside the powerplay in both their games so far, and could make some tweaks to their top order. Will Ayaan Khan get a promotion?Oman (probable XI): 1 Kashyap Prajapati, 2 Pratik Athvale (wk), 3 Aqib Ilyas (capt), 4 Zeeshan Maqsood, 5 Ayaan Khan, 6 Khalid Kail, 7 Shoaib Khan, 8 Mehran Khan, 9 Shakeel Ahmed, 10 Kaleemullah, 11 Bilal KhanScotland have their entire squad to choose from, but don’t seem to have any reason to make changes.Scotland (probable XI): 1 George Munsey, 2 Michael Jones, 3 Brandon McMullen, 4 Richie Berrington (capt), 4 Matthew Cross (wk), 6 Michael Leask, 7 Chris Greaves, 8 Mark Watt, 9 Chris Sole, 10 Brad Wheal, 11 Brad CurrieOman have fought hard but don’t have the points to show•ICC/Getty Images

Pitch and conditions

The caravan rolls into North Sound as Sir Vivian Richards Stadium hosts its first game of the T20 World Cup. There was a good grass cover on the pitch two days out from the game, but much of it has been shaved off, and batters can hope for a happy time.

Stats that matter

• Scotland and Oman have faced off four times in T20Is, including once at a T20 World Cup, in 2021. Scotland have won all four games chasing
• Munsey needs 70 more runs to become the second Scotland player with 2000 T20I runs – his captain Berrington was the first
• Zeeshan Maqsood needs two more wickets to become the second Oman player with 50 T20I wickets after Bilal Khan

Quotes

“it’s not easy to clear these boundaries when the wind is blowing, so we have to decide from which end you have to bring your best bowler, which end you have to charge as a batter, which bowler you have to look to hit with the wind.”

“I chatted to a few of the net bowlers just there where I was bowling spin with them. They all seem to think it’s pretty flat, which is great. I think our captain, Richard Berrington, has reached out to a few of the local boys and asked them how the conditions are and what the score is like at this time of year, because that’s massively important to know the scores at a different time of year.”

“there’s a lot of reminding ourselves of a philosophy, how we want to play and basically what our blueprint is to winning”

Firdose Moonda25-Jul-2024Last month, a South African T20 squad that last played together in December 2023*, traveled to (the USA and) the Caribbean and reached the World Cup final. This month, a South African Test side that last played together in the first week of January** is traveling to the Caribbean to begin their busiest period of red-ball cricket this cycle and attempt to get their WTC campaign on track.South Africa sit eighth on the points table but have only played four Tests, and you could argue only one real one. The Newlands Test against India lasted seven overs longer than an ODI thanks to an unsatisfactory Cape Town pitch and was no one’s idea of good quality cricket and their trip to New Zealand was headlined by what Kagiso Rabada called an “unacceptable” clash with their marquee T20 tournament and saw a second-string squad become the first South Africans to lose a Test series to New Zealand. Effectively, South Africa’s WTC starts now, with the first of four two-match series between now and January, and a real chance to develop something like form in this format, which is as rare a cricketing commodity as it gets for teams like them.”It’s a challenge that’s not necessarily unique to us and probably something that all the teams outside the big three face. It feels like we’re starting again and again as a team,” Temba Bavuma, South Africa’s Test captain said in Johannesburg. “You can hear in terms of the conversations, there’s a lot of reminding ourselves of a philosophy, how we want to play and basically what our blueprint is to winning. It’s nothing that is unique to us as a South African team . The challenge is we’ve just got to make it work with what we have. We don’t use it as an excuse. I think there’s definitely a lot of excitement from the guys and we’d like to focus on that excitement more than all the other uncontrollables.”Related

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Bavuma himself has only featured for a few hours in a Test in this cycle and has not played any international cricket in 2024. He was injured while fielding on the first day of the Boxing Day Test against India and later ruled out of the series with a hamstring strain. He played one SA20 match, two first-class games and in the CSA T20 Challenge but has flown largely under the radar as he readies for a high-profile comeback.”I’ve come out refreshed over the last couple of months of no cricket. It’s largely been about being in the gym and doing my rehab. I’ve been under rehab for the last two and a half to three months,” he said. “Mentally, that’s been tough; physically, it’s also been tough but I am quite refreshed and quite excited to have the opportunity again to be out there with the boys.”Since taking over the Test captaincy in February last year, when he was also removed as T20 skipper, the next six months will be his most consequential assignments as a leader. South Africa play in West Indies and Bangladesh and then host Sri Lanka and Pakistan at home which, on paper, seems to give them a fairly good chance of pushing for the WTC final. But they do all that at a time when players have already spent months playing in successive tournaments, from the SA20 to the IPL to the T20 World Cup and MLC, and gearing up for more. The CPL takes place after South Africa’s tour to West Indies followed by a fairly full home summer before another SA20, IPL… and so it goes. There is also the Champions Trophy sandwiched in-between and all that has made player management tricky.South Africa are already without three fast bowlers, for example, after Anrich Nortje opted out of a central contract to concentrate on T20s, Marco Jansen was rested from this series and Gerald Coetzee was ruled out with a side strain. “Obviously, it’s a setback. We build our fast bowling attack on our fast bowlers. We’ll still find a way to be effective in those conditions. Guys like KG, Lungi (Ngidi) and Nandre Burger – it’s a massive opportunity for them again to put up their hands and lead that bowling attack,” Bavuma said.Ngidi has only played one Test since December 2022 and Burger only has two caps to his name. Uncapped Migael Pretorius is also in the squad along with experienced domestic professional Dane Paterson, but it’s fair to say there is a level of experimentation happening as South Africa try to find their best Test combinations without much game time.A makeshift South Africa side lost the Test series to New Zealand back in February•Getty Images

“Looking at the inexperience and all the new faces that we find within the team, it’ll be a good test for the team and for those younger guys to kind of stamp their authority on international cricket,” Bavuma said.The same can be said for the batting. South Africa will have Tony de Zorzi (four caps) opening the batting alongside Aiden Markram and Tristan Stubbs (one cap) and David Bedingham (four caps) slotting in at No.3 and 5 respectively. That puts the onus on Bavuma not just to anchor the line-up, but to provide impetus and it’s something he is keen to take on.”It’s a responsibility. In my Test career, I’ve always found myself at No.6 or No.5 but I think now with the responsibility coming in, wanting to step up, wanting to score big runs, that opportunity comes in nicely at No.4,” he said.Those members of South Africa’s Test squad who were not at the MLC – Bavuma, de Zorzi, Stubbs, Dane Paterson, Keshav Maharaj and Kyle Verreynne – took part in a training camp last week in Durban. They will meet their MLC counterparts in Trinidad and Tobago on Monday ahead of a four-day warm up match against a West Indies Invitational XI from Wednesday. The first Test starts on August 7.

South Africa spinner says he prepares to bowl long Test spells even when playing limited overs contests

Firdose Moonda12-Aug-2024If you woke Keshav Maharaj up in the middle of the night and asked him to start a spell, he would immediately oblige.”My passion is spin bowling. I love it. I can wake up at two o’clock in the morning and if you ask me to bowl, I’ll bowl,” Maharaj said from Trinidad, where South Africa and West Indies drew the first Test of a two-match series. “That keeps me motivated. And also, the desire to want to do well for the team and take this team into a different direction, I’ll bowl the whole day if I need to.”He is not exaggerating. Maharaj bowled 40 overs from the Queen’s Park Media Centre End during West Indies’ first innings – albeit it was broken up by rain breaks – and delivered the second-longest spell by a bowler in men’s Test since 2001. In the absence of a second specialist spinner in the XI, Maharaj “knew there would be a lot of bowling for me to do,” and prepared for it in the months of white-ball cricket that preceded this series which included an SA20, IPL and the T20 World Cup.Related

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“Whatever format I play, I always keep my workloads as if I’m preparing for Test cricket,” Maharaj said. “The only thing that changes is your lengths and sometimes your lines a little bit, but from a longevity point of view, I still bowl my long hours, regardless of whether it’s T20 or fifty-over cricket. It’s something I pride myself in. I don’t have many variations like the other types of spinners around the world so I try to rely on consistency and being able to do it for long periods of time.”On a docile pitch, Maharaj’s discipline was key to South Africa taking a 124-run first innings lead but he also found some turn on the third day. A hint of bounce meant that when South Africa declared on the fifth morning, with two sessions and 20 minutes to go, they were banking on Maharaj, to a large extent, to be able to bowl them to victory.But, batting appeared easier on the final afternoon and West Indies were able to score at a healthy enough rate to keep South Africa at bay. In the end, Maharaj thought the hours of rain across the five days also played a part in denying him.”The constant rainfall bound the wicket and made it more pleasant to bat,” he said. “If there wasn’t so much time taken away due to the rain, I think the wicket would have deteriorated the way we expected it to.”Despite foreseeing spinner-friendly conditions, South Africa opted for an XI with only Maharaj as a frontline spinner and left Dane Piedt on the bench. With Lungi Ngidi and Wiaan Mulder contributing little more than a fifth of the total overs bowled, South Africa also looked a bowler short but Maharaj believed they “we got it (selection) right in the end. Aiden (Markram) did an exceptional job as our fourth bowler, created opportunities and got that pivotal breakthrough in the morning of the West Indies first innings.”With four wickets in each innings, Keshav Maharaj was South Africa’s best bowler of the match•AFP/Getty Images

Markram’s dismissal of Jason Holder sparked a West Indian collapse of 6 for 60 in 17.1 overs which set the situation up for South Africa to push for a win. That they didn’t has been described as “disappointing,” by everyone from captain Temba Bavuma to Maharaj, especially as South Africa have only a few fixtures scheduled.In this World Test Championship (WTC) cycle, they play only two-Test series. They have played five Tests and have only seven left between now and January. To give themselves a good chance of making the final, they will have to win all seven and will have to keep looking to force results in their favour.”It’s obviously disappointing not to get a result. We’re always going to play cricket to ensure that we can give ourselves the best chance, even if that process dangles the carrot with the prospect of losing a game,” he said, referring to South Africa setting West Indies a chaseable 298 in Trinidad. “Draws don’t count for much. We obviously know there’s a World Test Championship at stake, but we’re focusing on each and every game.”And in Maharaj’s case – on bowling as much as he can in each and every game. “I never want the captain to take the ball away from me in Test cricket so I’m always trying to bowl my best ball and trying to be a wily old character.”

She had finished last season as the Player of the Tournament in Thunder’s fourth-place finish

ESPNcricinfo staff15-Aug-2024Sydney Thunder have secured Sri Lanka captain Chamari Athapaththu’s services for the next three seasons via a pre-draft signing ahead of WBBL 2024-25, which is set to begin on October 27.Athapaththu, who played for Thunder last season as an undrafted player, filled the fourth overseas slot on their roster. She finished the season with a Player-of-the-Tournament performance in Thunder’s fourth-place finish, scoring 552 runs at 42.46 and taking nine wickets.”Committing to Sydney Thunder for the next three seasons was an easy decision because I believe in the vision of this club, and I want to be part of its future success,” Athapaththu said.Related

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“There’s so much to love about my Sydney Thunder family. My team-mates are not just colleagues; they are friends who push each other to be better every day, [which] is important to me. Western Sydney is the heart and soul of Sydney Thunder and representing such a diverse and vibrant community is a privilege to have. It’s been an incredible journey so far, and I’m so excited for what’s ahead.”Unlike in previous seasons where overseas players in the WBBL were contracted on a one-year basis, Athapaththu has signed under the league’s new multi-year contract provision. It allows each club to sign one overseas player for up to three years outside of the draft, which will take place on September 1″Chamari is obviously an exceptional cricket player, but she is also an exceptional human being who is team first and fan first,” Sydney Thunder general manager Trent Copeland said. “We know other teams were interested in signing her, but we made every effort to ensure she came back. To see the way she embraced and engaged with our members and fans last summer was something pretty special and on the field she had one of the WBBL’s great seasons.”Athapaththu has had stints in the WBBL previously with Melbourne Renegades and Perth Scorchers. Last season, after not being selected in the draft, she was added to the Thunder squad as cover for their three overseas players. Thunder open their 2024-25 campaign against Hobart Hurricanes on October 28.

Sydney Thunder updated squad

Chamari Athapaththu, Samantha Bates, Hannah Darlington, Saskia Horley, Anika Learoyd, Phoebe Litchfield, Claire Moore, Taneale Peschel, Georgia Voll, Tahlia Wilson

Mady Villiers nearly saves the day with the ball, after magnificent 80 from Orla Prendergast

ESPNcricinfo staff15-Sep-2024Ireland 170 for 5 (Prendergast 80) beat England 169 for 8 (Beaumont 40) by five wicketsIreland’s women squared the T20I leg of their series against England in thrilling – and familiar – fashion at Clontarf, with Mady Villiers reprising her heroic efforts at the death in last week’s third ODI, only for the contest to turn once again on a calamitous error in the field.In Belfast on Wednesday, Villiers had engineered three wickets in as many balls, including a run-out, only for Hollie Armitage’s final-ball misfield to gift Ireland their winning boundary. This time it was Villiers herself who was at fault, despite having once again claimed back-to-back bowled dismissals to leave Ireland needing two runs from two balls with a brand-new batter on strike.Christina Coulter Reilly, however, was able to scramble the winning runs after driving her first ball straight back at Villiers, who gathered and shied when she might have had time to turn and run for the stumps, and gave away two overthrows to allow Ireland to close out the campaign with their second nerve-jangling win in five games.It was, nevertheless, a deserved win for Ireland – in particular for Orla Prendergast, whose 80 from 51 balls was the day’s stand-out performance. While she was marshalling the chase, with solid support initially from Gaby Lewis and then from Leah Paul, England’s inexperienced line-up had few answers, and at 163 for 2, with seven runs needed from seven balls, there was only one realistic winner.Kate Cross, however, capped her maiden series as England captain with one last stand-out performance. Having dismissed Amy Hunter with the fourth ball of Ireland’s innings, she then bowled Prendergast with her final delivery of the tour to transfer all of the pressure onto Ireland’s middle-order.After a single from Paul, Sarah Forbes found the boundary with her first ball off Villiers to reduce the requirement to two runs from four balls. But Villiers responded by prising out with her very next ball, then added Jane Maguire first-ball to give England a huge opportunity to close out the series with a 2-0 win. It wasn’t to be.Earlier, England had posted a competitive 169 for 8 after being asked to bat first. Bryony Smith followed her matchwinning fifty in Saturday’s opening T20I with 28 from 26 balls in an opening stand of 44 with Tammy Beaumont, who top-scored with 40 from 34.Paige Scholfield made 34 from 31 to inject some urgency through the middle overs, but Prendergast served notice of a fine allround display with two wickets in as many overs to dent England’s big finish, before a brace of run-outs in the final over. As it turned out, those missing runs would prove crucial.”I knew if I got myself in and got a start, I would convert and accelerate towards the back end,” Prendergast told TNT Sports at the end of the match. “It was our last game of the summer. To put in a really good performance to finish to show how good a side we are was what motivated us.””We’ve kept ourselves in the game and gave ourselves a chance to win,” Cross added. “But Mady’s overs and tight finishes seem to be a theme of the week.”Orla batted brilliantly, she put us under a lot of pressure. We were trying to keep her off strike, but she kept finding the boundary. Sometimes, you just have to accept that someone has batted well, but we could have won that game right at the end there.”Pressure does funny things to people. If you give Mady that moment again, 99 times out of 100 she just runs and knocks the bails off.”

But India head coach admits they need to defend better on turning tracks

Alagappan Muthu31-Oct-20243:41

Gambhir: ‘The more T20 is played, the less people will defend’

A series defeat at home to New Zealand, sealed by a pair of spinners who had come on this tour with a combined two first-class five-fors, has led to questions about whether there has been a decline in India’s ability to play the turning ball on turning tracks. India head coach Gautam Gambhir wasn’t willing to go that far, but he did highlight a decline in defensive skills as a result of widespread T20 cricket.”Sometimes you’ve got to give it to the opposition as well,” he said on Thursday, a day before the third Test in Mumbai. “I think Mitchell Santner was outstanding in the last game, but yes, we’ll keep working hard. We’ll keep getting better. That’s about it. Guys are putting a lot of hard yards in the nets. Yes, ultimately it’s the results that matter when you’re playing international cricket, but I don’t think so that our skill against spin has actually gone down.”India have suffered collapses in every innings of this series. Forty-six all out happened in highly unusual conditions in Bengaluru, but from there, they have lost 7 for 54, 6 for 73 and 5 for 40, which has forced them to work on how to bat time in tough conditions.Related

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“Test cricket is about playing sessions,” Gambhir said. “I think if we can start to learn how to play sessions, and the kind of quality we have in our batting line-up, I think if we end up playing four to four-and-a-half sessions, we’ll have a lot of runs on the board.”The inability to meet this fundamental demand has highlighted the challenge that modern-day batters face in the era of T20 cricket. “We need to defend better,” Gambhir said. “I think that is something which is important. And especially on a turning track. Because if you’ve got confidence on your defence, a lot of things can be sorted. And that is something which we need to keep getting better, keep working on.”Because, again, I’ll keep going back to the same answer that a lot has to do with limited over-cricket and T20 cricket as well that when you’re so used to muscling the ball, that you end up forgetting the soft hands and all that stuff, which probably used to happen eight or 10 years back. So that is something, that is why I said that a complete cricketer is a cricketer who plays T20 format really successfully and also the Test cricket really successfully. He can adapt his game. And that is what growth is.”Growth is not only going about hitting the ball in the stands. It’s also about batting sessions on a turning track, where you know that you will not be able to hit in the stands, but you will be able to rotate better. For that, I think the foundation is very, very important.”The Mumbai Test is likely to be played in conditions that should help the spinners as well. At the end of India’s practice session on Thursday morning, the captain Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli took a good, long look at the pitch with assistant coach Abhishek Nayar. Kohli then left, but Gambhir and bowling coach Morne Morkel joined Rohit and Nayar and the four of them were involved in a discussion that lasted about 20 minutes. A little while later, the groundstaff began to brush away whatever grass that had managed to cling to the surface. Batters may have to unlearn the skills that help them succeed in T20s to do well here. But is that possible? Can a coach help them make that switch?”To a certain extent, yes,” Gambhir said, “To a certain extent, it has to come from the individual as well. That how much value does he end up giving it in defending the ball? That is something which is very important. And especially on a turning track. Because I’ve always believed that the best players and the most successful players in this format, or be it any format, always had solid defense. So that is something which we keep talking about. And it is not the overnight thing that we’re going to talk about it today and people will start getting better tomorrow. But it’s a continuous process. We need to keep working on it. We need to keep telling people the importance of defense.”Could India end up facing a situation where they have to look at a separate set of players more suited to Test cricket? Gambhir couldn’t commit to a hypothetical question but he did admit that “going forward, obviously, we will have to identify players who are solid red-ball cricketers. Because ultimately, to get the results, you will have to work really hard for three or four days or five days to be honest. So sometimes, as I just mentioned, it’s important. If we can bat sessions, we know that we’ve got the bowling attack to take 20 wickets. At the moment, it’s difficult to answer.”

England opener shrugs off disappointment and aims to return to ‘fearless’ brand of cricket

Andrew Miller20-Nov-2024Danni Wyatt-Hodge says that England are ready to park the criticism that followed their early exit from the T20 World Cup, and renew their focus on the “fearless” brand of cricket that went missing at the crucial moments of their decisive group-stage defeat to West Indies in Dubai last month.Speaking in the lead-up to Sunday’s first T20I against World Cup runners-up South Africa in East London, Wyatt-Hodge insisted that England had not “become a bad side in eight overs”, after an error-strewn performance in the field had allowed West Indies’ Hayley Matthews and Qiana Joseph to romp to fast-paced fifties, en route to a place in the semi-finals at England’s expense.England’s poor performance drew an unprecedented reaction in the media, not least from the former World Cup winner Alex Hartley, who called into question the players’ fitness levels – a point that was flatly rejected last week by their head coach, Jon Lewis. However, Wyatt-Hodge acknowledged that heightened scrutiny was an inevitable consequence of the growth of the women’s game.”That’s part of the game now isn’t it?” she said. “We put ourselves out there, people can say what they want, but all that matters is in our circle, and we’re all working really hard every day in training and games. We want to keep improving individually and as a team. And people are entitled to say what they want out of this group. That’s fine. We know what’s going on, so that’s all that matters.”We’ve played some outstanding cricket over the last few years, and we played some great cricket throughout the World Cup as well,” she added. “And we’re all here now in South Africa, and we’re really excited to get going. We just want to focus on playing that fearless brand of cricket that we’ve played over the last couple of years, and just enjoy it.”South Africa pulled off the shock of the tournament to beat defending champions Australia in their semi-final, before losing to New Zealand in their second consecutive appearance in the T20 World Cup final. Wyatt-Hodge acknowledged that they would pose another stiff challenge to her team, even though they have chosen to rest two senior players, Marizanne Kapp and Ayabonga Khaka, at this early juncture of their multi-format series.England “did not become a bad side in eight overs” against West Indies, says Wyatt-Hodge•ICC/Getty Images

“They’ve got a few youngsters in their squad, so we’re not going to be familiar with some of their bowlers,” Wyatt-Hodge said, with Eliz-Mari Marx and Nondumiso Shangase among the unfamiliar names.”We’re going to sit down and have a look at what they do, but they’ve got some outstanding players on their team, like Chloe Tryon, Sune Luus, Laura Wolvaardt. They’re a very challenging team to play against, but it’s always really good fun to come out here and play against them in their conditions. We’re really buzzing to get going.”One potential trump card for England could be the recall of Lauren Filer, their fastest bowler, who was overlooked for the conditions at the World Cup, but who can expect to relish the harder surfaces of South Africa over the coming weeks.”Filer’s bowling has really improved over the last year or so,” Wyatt-Hodge said. “She’s very scary to face in the nets, and especially out here, the pitches are quite quick and bouncy. So she’s going to be a handful to face out here. She’s been working really hard, and if she gets a chance, I’m sure she’s raring to go.”The timing of the series, and the multi-format nature, means that England are sure to have one eye on their Ashes tour of Australia in January. But Wyatt-Hodge recognised the significance of the tour in its own right, especially given the need to bounce back from their recent disappointments.Related

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“This is a massive series for us, leading up to the Ashes as well. We want to go out there and show off our skills, and show everyone how good we are.”We’ve had a few meetings, there’s always ways we can be better,” she added. “Personally, I’ve got things on the work on, like many of the other girls, so we want to keep pushing ourselves to be better and better.Even though I’m 33, I still feel like one of the youngsters, I feel about 23. I just want to have fun, but also, when I’m on it, I’m on it and I’m focused. I just want to keep working hard, and hopefully the youngsters see the likes of me, Heather [Knight], Amy [Jones], Nat [Sciver-Brunt] wanting to keep improving and working hard. We want to inspire them as well, to do what we’re doing.”The tour will conclude with a one-off Test match in Bloemfontein, starting on December 15, and though Wyatt-Hodge insisted “I just play what’s in front of me,” she admitted the prospect of adding a third Test cap to her tally was an enticing one.”We don’t really play that much of it, so every time I’m picked in a Test squad, it’s a really special feeling,” she said. “To make my Test debut in the Ashes Test couple of years ago was one of the best days I’ve had in my cricketing career. It hits different, a Test match does. We all really enjoy the challenge. It’s just so different, so having a Test match here against South Africa is going to be great prep going into the Ashes.”