CAPE TOWN - The Proteas Women’s team pace bowling riches are the envy of many teams around the world.
The new-ball duo of Shabnim Ismail and Marizanne Kapp are a fearsome unit with Ismail widely recognised as “the fastest bowler in the world”. Kapp, meanwhile, has routinely been ranked close to the very top on the ICC bowler’s list.
Fellow seamer Ayabonga Khaka has also been a long-time stalwart within the Proteas ranks, while all-rounder Nadine de Klerk is the leader of a group burgeoning young pacers looking to pounce on an opportunity.
Masabata Klaas, 28, is well aware of this situation and was certainly looking to expand her skill-set at CSA’s recent High-Performance fast bowling camp.
Klaas was previously a Proteas regular, having played a prominent part of the attack at the 2017 50-overs World Cup in England, but was overlooked at last season’s T20 World Cup in Australia.
CSA have tried to assist the bowlers’ development through high-tech video analysis, with former Proteas bowling coach Vincent Barnes guiding the charges.
“It’s great that CSA has put these camps together,” Klaas said. “The technology they now have available is really world-class and gives us so much more insight into what we are doing, how we are doing it and what we need to do to be better.
“We’ve seen that by following some of the feedback of the coaches, in relation to the technology, we’ve managed to increase our pace.”
Barnes was certainly impressed with Klaas’s effort over the past week.
“I was quite impressed with her. She went quite well. We will assess her action and how to improve it. A lot of these things are to keep the players injury free and find ways of tweaking to her act,” he said.
“I was again really happy with what I saw by this group of bowlers. We have some seriously talented fast bowlers in South Africa, both men and women, and with the right nurturing they have the ability to progress all the way to the top.
“It was just basically to check if there ways of keeping them injury-free. The initial tests we did earlier in the year were on players that had injuries and we were trying to investigate why they were picking up these injuries, and now it’s about trying to make sure they stay injury free and how we can even improve them,” Barnes added.
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