Proteas Women’s all-rounder Marizanne Kapp believes that her team has what it takes to win the ICC Women’s World T20 and that their slew of warm-up match losses is not an indication of the team’s potential in the competition.

The tournament gets started this Friday across three venues in Antigua, Guyana and St Lucia with the final set for 24 November.

Speaking ahead of their second and last official warm-up match against Australia in Guyana tomorrow, Kapp said she was pleased with the preparation that the team has done and believes that they will peak at the right time.

‘I’m happy with the preparation. The games have not gone our way, we haven’t played the best cricket but I think we’ve learned a lot. There’s a lot of positives to take out of it,’ said Kapp.

‘We would have liked to win every single game but I’m a believer in peaking at the right time. I’ve seen in the sides I’ve played for – the [Sydney] Sixers [Women’s Big Bash League] and the Surrey Stars [Super League]. The years we won was actually the years we started off so badly and people said that we should rather come back and try again next year and we ended up winning both of those tournaments after starting that way. I think it’s not about how you start, it’s about how you end.’

Choosing to remain positive, Kapp is looking forward to seeing South Africa finally firing from all cylinders with the team excelling at all three facets of the game: batting, bowling and fielding. She said it was small things that saw them missing out on wins in some of their warm-up matches.

‘I think it’s just wrong choices sometimes and wrong execution rather than anything else,’ she explained. ‘I still think we’ve played good cricket in patches but now it’s just about everything coming together on the same day and everyone performing on the same day. We need to make sure that all three departments fire on any given day. That is how we are going to be successful in this tournament.’

Kapp was full of praise for South Africa’s up-and-coming bowlers and some senior players who have taken on more responsibility in the absence of Ayabonga Khaka. Since the pace bowler was not considered for the tournament due to a shoulder injury, Kapp and Shabnim Ismail have had to rely on the rest of the attack and Kapp says they have stepped up admirably.

‘We’ve got some brilliant youngsters coming up and other bowlers like Klaasie [Masabata Klaas], she’s been bowling brilliantly, so I’m pretty excited to see what she’s gonna do at this World Cup. It’s always good to have that backup. I know that if I struggle, we have quite a few bowlers who can put up their hands and I back the girls completely.’

When asked about her thoughts on their last warm-up match against the former World T20 champions Australia tonight (10pm SAST), Kapp stressed that it was important that the team end their preparations off well.

‘We would like to win the game but, even if it doesn’t happen, it’s not the end of the world. We had the best chance of preparing for this World T20 so we have absolutely no excuses to not be used to the conditions by now. I’m excited to see what we do tomorrow and how we respond to Australia and the lessons we’ve learned in the other games.

‘We’ve done all the hard work, it’s just about putting the pieces together. As long as we keep improving game by game, we should be fine by the time our first [tournament proper] game starts,’ added Kapp.

Photo: Kieran Galvin/NurPhoto via Getty Images