South Africa pulled off a stunning Women’s T20 World Cup upset, ruthlessly knocking out defending champions and six-time winners Australia to reach Sunday’s final.
The Proteas had lost all seven of their previous matches against Australia in this competition, including the 2023 final in Cape Town, but ended their opponents’ hopes of a fourth straight title with an eight-wicket victory in which Anneke Bosch (74no from 48 balls) played the starring role.
Bosch bashed nine boundaries, including the winning four, and skipper Laura Wolvaardt hit 42 off 37 as South Africa raced to their target of 135 with 16 balls to spare in Dubai, securing a showdown with either West Indies or New Zealand at the same venue.
Australia – still without captain Alyssa Healy after she injured her foot in the drubbing of Pakistan on October 11 – stuttered to 134-5 after being inserted; Beth Mooney (44 off 42) top-scoring and becoming the fastest player to 3,000 T20 international runs, reaching the milestone in her 100th innings.
The tournament favourites perhaps missed Healy’s guidance in the field as South Africa made light work of the chase – Bosch and Wolvaardt drumming 96 from 65 deliveries for the second wicket – and ensured that, for the first time, a Women’s T20 World Cup final will not feature at least one of Australia and England.
Australia will not appear in the final for the first time since the inaugural edition in 2009, with their 15-match winning streak in the tournament broken by a South Africa side now eyeing their first World Cup title in either 20 or 50-over cricket.
Australia slipped to 18-2 in three overs after losing the toss, with Grace Harris (3) and Georgia Wareham (5) the players to fall, to Ayabonga Khaka (2-24) and Marizanne Kapp (1-24) respectively.
Mooney and stand-in skipper Tahlia McGrath (27) rebuilt with a partnership of 50 from 55 deliveries, while Ellyse Perry (31 off 23) and Phoebe Litchfield (16no off 9) racked up 35 runs across the final 19 deliveries once Mooney was superbly run out by Kapp.
Fourteen of Perry’s runs came after she was dropped on 17 by Tazmin Brits at long-off, while Litchfield rifled the first ball she faced for four amid three boundaries overall in her enterprising cameo.
South Africa surged to 43-1 in the powerplay – the Proteas significantly bettering Australia’s 35-2 from their first six overs – with the dismissal of Brits, bowled by Annabel Sutherland for 15 in the fifth over after clubbing Ash Gardner for six in the fourth, not stemming the run-scoring but boosting it.
Bosch swept and drove successive fours off Sophie Molineux in the sixth over, while Wolvaardt’s sweetly-struck six off Australia pacer Darcie Brown in the next kept the defending champions on the back foot.
Spinners Wareham and Gardner were pummelled later on as Wolvaardt and Bosch registered South Africa’s best partnership against Australia in T20 cricket and perhaps the only disappointment for the Proteas was that Wolvaardt was not there at the end, having chipped Sutherland (2-26) to McGrath at mid-off in the 15th over.
Player of the Match Bosch wrapped up an emphatic victory by hauling Megan Schutt to the midwicket boundary two balls into the 18th over, sparking wild South Africa celebrations and snapping Australia’s recent dominance of this event.
Australia stand-in captain Tahlia McGrath said, “It [losing] is going to be pretty hard to take. We just didn’t really show up tonight and you can’t afford to do that in tournaments like this. Full credit to South Africa, they outplayed us tonight and we weren’t at our best.
“We’ve had this World Cup in our minds for a very long time now. We worked really hard over the off-season to fine tune some things, we were really well prepped coming into here. It felt like we left no stone unturned but just didn’t show up tonight.
“We found it quite tricky and South Africa bowled really well. They just held stump line, took the pace off nicely and made it hard for us to take risks. At the halfway mark we thought that maybe 140-150 was par and fell short, then South Africa made it look like a totally different wicket and batted really well.”
