Heather Knight Eyes Test Triumph in South Africa as England Build Towards Ashes Challenge

England’s tour of South Africa is nearing its end, and currently locked in battle in the one-off Test match at the Mangaung Oval in Bloemfontein, Heather Knight and her chargers have a chance to secure wins in all three formats after victories in the ODI (2-1) and T20I (3-0) series’.

The demands of the longer format

South Africa came into the contest without a lot of expectations due to the gap in experience and matches played, but they will take a lot of confidence from the drawn match at the County Ground in Taunton in 2022. 

England, with their history and experience, should be clear favorites in this encounter, but the threat posed by a talented South African side cannot be underestimated.

England will, however, have one eye on a tougher challenge down under against Australia soon after this tour, and having managed to tick off a lot of boxes in the limited-overs series’, Captain Knight has said she hopes her team can overcome the mental and technical challenges throughout the four days to match the required standards of the format.

“It's a tricky challenge because we play Test cricket so rarely; I think mentally it is the biggest challenge.” Knight told Sportsboom.com. 

“Getting your head around doing stuff for longer, really; it can be quite daunting to look at the game as a whole because obviously we don't play a lot of longer-form cricket.”

“Breaking it down is really important; trying to take it in blocks and taking it ball by ball, and communication around our plan will also be important.”

Preparing for the Ashes

South Africa last played a home Test match in the 2001/02 season, and despite their rise in international cricket in recent times, they still have quite a long way to go to catch up with the likes of England and Australia, who are exposed to a lot more red-ball cricket.

Knight added that with the lack of Test matches around, the current match will go a long way in helping them prepare for the tour of Australia.

“It becomes doubly important with the inexperience we have, naturally, because we don’t really play a lot of Test matches, so being really clear on where we are in the game and how we want to move it forward, why we are doing a certain thing, it could be really good learning for us.”

“Going into that Ashes Test match early next year, we want to use this as an opportunity to ask loads of questions, grow as individual players, and work at that mentality, but it's a tough but exciting challenge.”

“It's the same for both teams; both of us don’t play a lot of Test cricket, South Africa even less than us; we are all excited for the challenge, and we want to be able to make an impact over the next few days.”

The development of domestic cricket

Asked about the need to be given the platform to play more matches, Knight said that the physical challenges, especially with the quick bowlers, would make it difficult, but if it were to be done, there would need to be a lot more cricket played domestically.

“I think it's really hard without domestic cricket; preparing bowlers in particular physically without breaking them is really tough because, naturally, a large amount of cricket we play is white ball, so I think it's really tough to play more and get the preparation right in terms of those bowlers.”

“Selfishly, I do love playing Test cricket; it's the most enjoyable format for me, so I think it's about how you incorporate it alongside franchise cricket and all the cricket we play.”

“I do think multiformat cricket is the way to do that; I'd love to see that expanded, and obviously we are going to get to see that a little bit in the future tours program with the West Indies playing against us, which will be exciting.”