'Playing Australia On Their Home Soil Is Not Always Easy, But SA Showed Grit And Fight Throughout', Says Moreeng

'Playing Australia on their home soil is not always easy, but SA showed grit and fight throughout', (Image Source: IANS)

Cricket South Africa: South Africa women’s head coach Hilton Moreeng reflected on the team's performances on their recent all-format tour of Australia, stating the visitors’ showed grit and fight throughout despite things not being easy for them to face the hosts’ on their home soil.

South Africa achieved their first-ever T20I and ODI wins over Australia, though they lost the series. They also played their first-ever Test match against Australia at the WACA Ground, where they suffered defeat by an innings and 284 runs.

"There’s been a lot of good. You can only be proud of what they've shown. Playing Australia on their home soil is not always easy, but they've shown the grit and the fight throughout. This ranks as one of the best we've had because of the fight that we had to keep showing.

"Every time we had our backs against the wall, we had to keep fighting, somebody had to pull through and be able to come back with the wins that we did. So I think you can only build on that and take a lot of confidence out of this. Super proud and for us as a team, we can just go back and just make sure that we can keep improving on our shortfalls," said Moreeng in a Cricket South Africa (CSA) statement.

Speaking about the learnings from the one-off Test against Australia, Moreeng said, “It was a great fight. The players went out there, they showed a lot of grit and tried to put right what we couldn't do in the first session of the Test.”

"Playing against such an experienced team on their home soil, you always knew what experience they had, they're going to ask the right questions, and their bowlers did that in the first session. We found ourselves wanting there, but we tried again with the ball and the bowlers fought.

"At the end of the day, when the wicket started getting better, Australia just showed the class that they are in. From there, we could see when we applied ourselves a little bit better in the second innings, the result we could have possibly got in the first innings."

Moreeng appreciated debutants Tazmin Brits (31) and Delmi Tucker (64), along with the experienced Chloé Tryon (64), for their second innings performances in the Test match. "There’s a lot of good learnings that we take with us from this. It's a format that's fairly new to us. The good thing is everyone in the changing room wants to continue playing it. It's a thumbs up for us as a team, we can only improve on it.

"They've learned a lot about themselves as cricketers in this format and throughout the last two and a half days and what is actually required to be able to be successful in this. The ability is there; the more you play, the more you get the hang of it and the understanding of what is required. So you can only get better the more you play it," he concluded.