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How a slow start was later redeemed by Tazmin Brits, who finished with a career-best 81 in her team's victory
If there weren't a whole lot of Tazmin Brits's fans seated among the 12,000-odd crowd at the Chepauk on Friday, her Powerplay batting wouldn't have helped her make any new ones either. She wasn't impressed herself, and was blunt in her admission: "I may have scored the runs today, but I'm not happy [how I started]". However, in those 92 minutes spent in the middle Brits redeemed herself with a career-best 81 that was at the heart of South Africa's first win on this India tour in five attempts.
The flawed knock was an innings of two halves as the opener went from struggling for timing to a timely acceleration that gave South Africa an above-par score in the three-match T20I series opener in Chennai.
A gold medalist in javelin in a different timeline, Brits kept throwing her bat at everything in the hopes to quickly find her T20 mojo. But she toiled to put bat to ball. When she did find some connection, she failed to push the ball beyond the square. Of the eight balls she faced from Pooja Vastrakar in her two PowerPlay overs, Brits was beaten four times and had only a solitary run in her first 10 deliveries. Coming on the back of a middling ODI series in Bengaluru, where she scored just 61 runs in three outings, it was evident Brits was trying too hard.
Luckily at the other end was an on-song Laura Wolvaardt, smacking a 16-run over off of Renuka Thakur and, in general, looking like she'd been batting on a different track altogether. Overcompensating too, maybe, as she felt compelled to take all the risks on Brits's behalf, but showing the way, nonetheless, on how to take the attack to the opposition.
Brits was quick to grasp, and decided to hang back once the spinners came on, and wait for the ball to come to the bat as she sought to find a way out of the rut. That helped open up the lesser-manned regions behind square, where Brits scored seven of her 10 boundaries on the night.
This included the sweep for the first four to ease the nerves, the flick that helped regain some confidence and a pull to feast on Indian spin troika's listless bowling. Even so, Brits was only lurking at a run-a-ball 25 with another in-form batter, Marizanne Kapp, taking over the aggressor's role following Wolvaard's dismissal.
With Kapp, in the second-wicket partnership of 96, Brits played the second fiddle. Her half-century was 40 balls in the making while Kapp took only 30 to reach the milestone in the same over. But once Kapp's counterattack was halted, the onus of acceleration fell on the set batter.
Brits was up to the task as she closed out the 17th over with two humongous sixes, slog-sweeping Radha Yadav between midwicket and long-on, off consecutive balls. In Deepti Sharma's final over that yielded 18 runs, Brits collected two more boundaries as she went on to score 31 runs off the last 15 deliveries she faced before being dismissed on the last ball of the visitors' innings.
Picking up on India's off-side heavy field, Brits quickly switched her attention to the legside and started finding gaps, or muscling them over the in-field. A whopping 79% of her runs - 59 off 81 - came on the on-side, including all of her three towering sixes.
"I don't think it's nerves. We're cricketers and unfortunately that's life. We get into deep holes," Brits said of the early mistakes in the game, her first in Chennai after missing out on the Test due to an illness. "If you don't get runs, you're not doing your job. So, I think it was maybe just more in myself. I tried to hit the ball too hard in the first few overs. I wanted to hit the leather off the ball, maybe send the ball back to South Africa. But yeah, I think I wasn't getting [into] good positions. I think there's a lot of basic things I should have looked at now that I think about it."
Brits admitted that conversations with Wolvaardt and Kapp in the middle, technical or otherwise, helped ease her in when she felt she was letting them down with her initial stutter.
"I was actually apologizing to her. I keep saying I'm sorry, I'm sorry because I keep putting pressure on her," Brits said of the partnership with her captain. "I felt very bad. But she said at least [you're] showing intent. So that's what I kept trying to do, you know, remain positive. And I was hoping if I just get one ball on the bat, something will happen and the game will change. But yeah, I felt very bad that I was, like, not getting off strike quicker.
"[Then] It was now or never type of thing and of course communication from Wolfie and Kappie also helped. It's difficult to see when you're betting what you're actually doing wrong. Maybe your head position or you know you're leaning back. So it's nice to have that from a different end... That information from them, I think that maybe helped me shift the game a bit.
"I mean, they're both in good form. Playing the leagues here in India they know the wickets, they know a lot of the bowlers... So the information from them always helps when you know what to expect. You might not always work out your way. But if someone tells you this is an offie and she does this, it's easy to program it into your head. The experience that they bring is a lot more comforting.
"Wolfie, I mean, look what she did in that first over and the second over. And I was like, OK, well, if I'm battling, at least the team's not battling, you know? So, that helps because you feed off others' confidence as humans."
From struggling to finding her batting rhythm to turning a new leaf with a match-defining knock, Brits proved the old adage right: It's not how you start that's important, but how you finish. And in doing so, Brits sure put her hand up and answered the captain's call for @L0$ that can make the difference.
