A Golden Debut for Laura Wolvaardt
A Golden Debut for Laura Wolvaardt. Wolvaardt was one of nine South African players to get their first Test cap in last month’s four-day tie with England in Taunton. The stylish right-hander scored 16 runs in both innings. Wolvaardt would have liked to score more runs with the bat, but the 23-year-old expressed it was still a great honor to play for her country in a red-ball match against a strong England team.
What was Laura’s take
“It was an incredible week,” Wolvaardt said. “Test cricket is something that I have always wanted to play since I was a little girl, so to be able to do that and debut with a whole bunch of the team was a great experience. It was really tough, from a cricket point of view. The red ball was very tough to face and I had some challenging innings up front. Overall, it was a great learning experience, I will learn a lot from it going forward and hopefully, it is the first of many.”
Laura Wolvaardt – The Rise
Wolvaardt is now paying close attention to the white-ball part of the tour. Later this month, South Africa will play England in three ODIs and three T20Is. The games will help the two teams get ready for next year’s ICC T20 World Cup in South Africa, where they are likely to be among the favorites to win the coveted 20-over trophy.
South Africa’s Triumph Against England
Wolvaardt hopes to use the recent Test match as a learning experience and go back to what she does best during the upcoming white-ball series, which is getting a lot of runs.
“For me, the Test was all about just making sure my technique is right and try and get into strong positions. The basics will stay the same for the ODIs, so it will actually be good because I have done a bit of technical work now leading up to the ODI series, so hopefully, I will be able to time the ball well going into it,” she expressed.
“Overall, just (getting the chance of) facing their bowlers in tough conditions, all of that will help with the ODI series. Hopefully, it will be a bit easier now with the white ball; so fingers crossed. We are very excited going into the ODI series. We had a bit of a mixed bag of results against them this year; we won the first game (at the World Cup) and then very disappointingly lost the semi-final, so very exciting to get going against them. We have a very exciting ODI team and it is a format that our team enjoys and is very good at, so hopefully we can give them a bit of a run for their money and payback for the semi-final.”