Opening match win will ease the pressure in the tournament: Anneke Bosch

By Mpumi Manyisi
3rd October 2024

Proteas Women all-rounder Anneke Bosch says a win against the West Indies in their opening ICC Women’s T20 World Cup match in Dubai will help ease the pressure throughout the tournament.

The Proteas get into this world showpiece as favourites, coming on the back of being 2023 runner-ups.

Speaking to SABC Sport, Bosch says they hope to come into the tournament with a different mindset having learnt from last season’s mistakes.

"We have learnt that you can never take a game for granted and you can never take a team for granted or kind of just expect a certain result because it is T20 cricket and anything can happen,” Bosch said.

“Last year's tournament because we lost against Sri Lanka and against Australia in the group stages, we kind of had to rely on other results to make it to the semis and fortunately those results did go our way.

“But it's not always gonna happen like that, so every game is really important and yeah, just winning the first game is crucial and it just takes a bit of pressure off some of the other games.

“If you lose your first game, the rest of your tournament becomes quite difficult. So, yeah, I think we would have learnt from last year's mistake or just knowing what kind of pressure it puts you under when you lose the first game. Hopefully, we'll be ready and switched on for that game against West Indies."

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The Proteas lost both of their warm-up matches against New Zealand and India.

However, the 31-year-old believes the team should not read too much in their final build-up performance.

"Warm-up matches against New Zealand and India obviously didn't go our way, we were quite disappointed with how that went but I think also not too much. We don't wanna look too much into it or read too much into it,” she added.

“There are warm up matches for a reason so we try things and we kind of see what we can do and what we can't do in conditions like this. Obviously, it would have been nice to win at least one of those games just to help with momentum and confidence going into the World Cup but yeah, I don't think we'll be too phased or worried about that."