England piled up 219-1 in an 89-run victory against Sri Lanka on the opening night of the tournament before a nervy four-wicket win over Ireland, in which captain Nat Sciver-Brunt injured her calf.<\/p>\n
Since then England have brushed aside Scotland, West Indies and New Zealand to build momentum before the semi-finals.<\/p>\n
Opener Danni Wyatt-Hodge is the tournament’s leading run-scorer while Charlie Dean has stood in ably for Sciver-Brunt. <\/p>\n
Coach Charlotte Edwards, who was brought in at the start of last summer after the Ashes clean sweep down under, appears to have brought a calm steel to the dressing room.<\/p>\n
“I have been so impressed with them,” said Hartley. “They are the best [England] team I have seen for a good few years.<\/p>\n
“They seem to have everything covered. I think they have one of the best bowling attacks in the world and with the bat, Danni Wyatt-Hodge is in the form of her life.”<\/p>\n
South Africa finished second in Group 1 behind Australia, who beat West Indies on Tuesday to secure their place in Sunday’s final at Lord’s.<\/p>\n
The Proteas have beaten England in the sides’ past two semi-final meetings – at the 2023 T20 World Cup and last year’s 50-over World Cup – but were unconvincing through much of the group stage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England piled up 219-1 in an 89-run victory against Sri Lanka on the opening night of the tournament…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-666770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666770","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=666770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}