“We’ll have to wait and see,” Knight said. “Obviously, she lost in that first ODI, and it’s very rare to see Kate in so much pain. So we’ll have to see how she reacts to that. She’ll try to eat a small bowl today, try and have a The pair will take a number of spells, and then we will make a decision based on what we think is best for the team.
“Obviously we have a huge amount of cricket coming in, so it will be at the forefront [of our thoughts]Kate is an important player for us in one-day cricket and Test cricket. We want to give him the biggest chance because he is so desperate to play Test cricket, but we think our seam bowlers are going to be very important over the next month, so we want to really look after them.
“So, “I don’t know” is the honest answer, but if she doesn’t play, we’ll obviously miss her.”
The upcoming Test will be South Africa’s first on home soil in 22 years, and Knight – who still considers the format his favorite despite the lack of opportunity – said his players were excited by the prospect of “pulling the whites back”. . , However, the challenge of changing the mindset from white-ball to red-ball cricket will be the biggest factor in the coming four days.
“From my own experience, I absolutely love playing red-ball cricket,” Knight said. “It’s such a test, such a challenge, and something I love doing…the mental challenge, the repetition of skills, adapting to the many different situations you come across. I absolutely love it .
“But honestly, in preparation for the test, everyone was like, ‘Okay, what do I do, how do I learn? How do I grow?’ It is very difficult to pick a team, just because you are going on minimal information, from white-ball cricket or maybe from a Test match that happened a year ago.
“So it’s quite hard to prepare for. Mentally, it’s about getting clarity about how you’re going to play. I don’t think it should be too different from your one-day mentality, it’s just something It’s about doing things for the time being.” And to manage the changing conditions in the game a little better.
“You have to be okay with not scoring sometimes and bearing the pressure for a while. But I also want the girls to have the mentality that when we get a chance to really put pressure on the opposition, they To do this. We move the game forward at the rate of knots?”
The two teams last faced each other in a Test match at Taunton in 2022, where Marizanne Kapp scored a brilliant 150 to set her side up for a tough encounter.
“She’s obviously top-class, she’s a key player for them,” Knight said. “We plan to try to get him out. Laura.” [Wolvaardt]He also has the ability to bat for a long time and score some big runs, so he is another key player. We want to have real clarity about how we want to go about it, then it’s about adapting to how they’re playing the game at the moment.”
Despite the proximity of the Ashes, where the Test will be held at the huge MCG for the first time, Knight insisted England’s entire focus was on the “here and now”.
“Our full focus is on this Test match. It’s on the calendar, and it’s something the girls have highlighted that they really want to play in and do really well. Any chance to play a Test match Really good.
“Throughout this series we’ve had our eye on the Ashes and we’ve been trying to prepare for that, but also not thinking too far ahead and doing what we have to do to get some success. And obviously we’ve had great success on this tour, it’s been a great tour for us, a really successful tour, we’ve learned a lot and we can fix things before we go into the Ashes.”
Andrew Miller is the UK editor for ESPNcricinfo. @miller_cricket
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