‘Can’t complain about preparation’ – Dane van Niekerk

South Africa were in the West Indies in September for three one-day internationals and one Twenty20 International, which gave them a bit of an advantage over other travelling teams. It didn’t help them in their ICC Women’s World T20 2018 warm-up games, though, as the batters faltered and they lost to both Pakistan and Australia.

“We're going to try and make the most of it. We had some brilliant preparation for the World Cup. We had a month here, so we can't complain about preparation,” said the South Africa captain ahead of her team’s opening game, against Sri Lanka.

“At the end of the day at the World Cup you just need to sharpen up your skills. It's not something you come here and teach yourself some skills. The skills should be there. It's just fine-tuning them today.”

The batting has just not worked for South Africa – in the warm-ups, they scored 72/9 against Pakistan and 79/9 against Australia.

“The batting is a big downer at the moment for us. Having said that, we have a very strong batting line-up. It's just getting us all to click together at one point, and hopefully we can, yeah, do really well,” said van Niekerk.

“(St Lucia) looks like a very good batting wicket. We're going to have to bowl really well on a wicket like that, so we're going to have to have our bowling plan spot on. I think our bowling unit has been brilliant so far, and I can't fault the bowling.

“It's just getting the batting unit to play all together. But I think we can do, that we have the firepower you have power within our batting line-up to put in a performance like there was in Guyana.”

Rain might be a constant companion during the Group A games in Gros Islet – we’ve already had a washout, with England and Sri Lanka splitting points.

“At the end of the day every team comes here and wants to top the ladder. That's by winning all your games. That's what we're coming out here to do. We have to win all the games to top the ladder,” said van Niekerk.

“We're not going to think about the weather. That's an unpredictable thing. Hopefully we can put a good performance in to get the first couple points.”