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ICC WOMEN'S WORLD T20

November 16, 2018

Hilton Moreeng

Gros Islet, Saint Lucia

England - 87/3, South Africa - 85

Q. Hilton, England played well, but it's got to be a very disappointing performance from South Africa, particularly the batting.
HILTON MOREENG: I think for us it is, yeah. They played well under the conditions. Once again, very frustrating with our batting. It just didn't fire as far as the World Cup is concerned.

Q. Can you put into words how disappointing it is to go out at this stage of the competition.
HILTON MOREENG: Actually, for everyone in the change room, very disappointed because we know the quality we have. At one stage, we played with three batters. We couldn't get to a respectable total or a defendable total. If you look at our overall game, bowlers have actually bowled well and also backed up by good fielding. It's just that on a day when you look at the game against West Indies, it's a game we felt, with the quality we had, it's a score we should be able to chase down. It just didn't happen.

Q. Your kind of key player with the bat is Lizelle Lee, and she's kind of under-performed in this tournament. Has somebody been telling her, it seems like she's perhaps stifling her natural game, that she's not hitting out to the extent that we're used to seeing that. Do you think that there's been some advice there from the coaches telling her to bat in a different way this tournament?
HILTON MOREENG: Not at all. Not at all. I think even if you look, we're so frustrated because some of the players got in a muddle, they just changed their game plan and approach. I think even today was a bit on the slow side. We still felt you can get yourself a respectable score. If you have 130 on this weekend, it would be difficult to chase because we chased those. For us, it's when you look at the entire batting lineup, actually, since we got to our game against the West Indies, it hasn't been good.

Q. It was such a timid performance early on with the batting in that play in the first 10 overs. Do you think that was a bit of a hangover from what happened a couple of nights ago against the West Indies with that collapse?
HILTON MOREENG: I think what needed to be said was said against the game against West Indies. And today we knew that it's a team we had to win. A team that's in the losing change room is going to struggle to make it through. Everybody came in knowing. I mean, the kind of chairs that we have, that's why we loaded the team with another one or two batters that we got in, that we could see if we could change it because we felt that against the bowling lineup of England, we can actually -- it's a bowling lineup we could take on and give ourselves a chance as a team.

But the basics that we're not applying well. When you look at application, I mean, even your -- even simple things like rotation is something that's not happened like it's supposed to.

So for us, I think, in the changing room, we need to sit down again and go back to the drawing board because it's been a really disappointing World Cup for all of us. With the talent we have on the team, it's really tough. For supporters back home to us, I think for us, it's unacceptable.

Q. Given what you were seeing from individual players on this African side and domestic Twenty20 comps occasionally for your country, do you think there's a mental immense hurdle this side needs to overcome sooner rather than later because it doesn't seem to marry up, the performance here versus what we know they can do.
HILTON MOREENG: Mentally, I think, at the end of the day, it's how players approach it. You look at the way everything started, there's not a lot of teams that can score 200, as you can see from the scores over 100 in this round. So mentally, I think when we arrived, yeah, I think the preparation was very good. Everybody got a run on this against West Indies prior to the World Cup. And it's just, for us, we feel that since the World Cup has started, it just didn't fire.

Q. Looking forward, this is still quite a young team.
HILTON MOREENG: Yeah.

Q. You're not expecting anyone to retire. This is the core of the team you're going to be taking forward in 2020. What do you need to get right between now and 2020 at the next Twenty20?
HILTON MOREENG: We're blessed with a lot of youngsters. This is coming through. We still have a young keeper in Faye. For us, where the team is going and where the buildup towards 2020 now is for us now to sit down and look at what we could have -- what we can work, what we can improve after this World Cup. I think it's one of those that you want to quickly put behind you as a team and focus on the future.

Yes, there's a lot of youngsters, and we still feel like some will be better as they start playing to their potential, which is always one thing I fear as a coach because there's a lot of potential in the change room. It's just not being executed at the world stages. As we are now sitting where we are as a team because of that.

When you look at the bowling attack, again, world class. It's just not been backed up by batters.

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