De Klerk represents a toughness to this South Africa side that has stood them in good stead in recent times, taking them to two T20 World Cup finals.<\/p>\n
In 2023, they knocked out England with de Klerk bowling a brilliant four-over spell of 1-17. Last year saw them shock Australia in the UAE.<\/p>\n
“We’ve definitely moved away from, ‘we’re just gonna rock up at a World Cup and hope we give one or two teams a good run for their money’. Now we actually feel like we are really competing,” she tells BBC Sport.<\/p>\n
Though on both occasions South Africa lost in the subsequent final, de Klerk knows they’re getting close: “Last year, losing against New Zealand in that World Cup final broke a lot of hearts, it was very emotional for a long time after that. So I think it [winning] would just change women’s cricket in South Africa.”<\/p>\n
Having been bowled out for 69 against England in their tournament opener, South Africa then went on a five-game winning run for the first time in their history, powering them towards the final four.<\/p>\n
Once there, they demolished England by 125 runs. They are on a roll.<\/p>\n
Speaking about her group-stage batting exploits, De Klerk adds: “It’s part of my DNA being very feisty and quite aggressive and hating losing. Whenever I’m on a cricket field, I never feel it’s over.<\/p>\n
“Even if we need 12 or 14 [runs an over], I don’t feel it’s over. If you have wickets in hand and batters at the crease that are in anything can happen.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"De Klerk represents a toughness to this South Africa side that has stood them in good stead in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-236459","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}