Test debut a dream come true for Laura Wolvaardt

Wolvaardt was one of nine South Africa players that earned a first Test cap during the drawn four-day clash against England in Taunton last month, with the classy right-hander contributing scores of 16 in both innings.

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And while Wolvaardt would have loved to have scored more with the bat, the softly-spoken 23-year-old said it was still a superb experience to be able to represent her country in a red-ball clash against such a strong England side.

"It was an incredible week," Wolvaardt said.

"Test cricket is something that I have always wanted to play since I was a little girl, so to be able to do that and debut with a whole bunch of the team was a great experience.

"It was really tough, from a cricket point of view. The red ball was very tough to face and I had some challenging innings up front.

"Overall, it was a great learning experience, I will learn a lot from it going forward and hopefully, it is the first of many."

Wolvaardt's attention is now firmly turned to the white-ball component of the tour, with South Africa scheduled to take on England in three ODIs and three T20Is later this month.

The matches will play an important build up towards the ICC T20 World Cup in South Africa next year, with the two teams likely to be among the favourites to claim the coveted 20-over trophy.

And Wolvaardt is looking to use the recent Test match as a learning experience and return to what she knows best - scoring plenty of runs - during the upcoming white-ball series.

"For me, the Test was all about just making sure my technique is right and try and get into strong positions. The basics will stay the same for the ODIs, so it will actually be good because I have done a bit of technical work now leading up to the ODI series, so hopefully, I will be able to time the ball well going into it,” she said.

"Overall, just (getting the chance of) facing their bowlers in tough conditions, all of that will help with the ODI series. Hopefully, it will be a bit easier now with the white ball; so fingers crossed.

"We are very excited going into the ODI series. We had a bit of a mixed bag of results against them this year; we won the first game (at the World Cup) and then very disappointingly lost the semi-final, so very exciting to get going against them.

"We have a very exciting ODI team and it is a format that our team enjoys and is very good at, so hopefully we can give them a bit of a run for their money and payback for the semi-final."

South Africa ODI squad: Sune Luus (c), Anneke Bosch, Trisha Chetty, Nadine de Klerk, Lara Goodall, Shabnim Ismail, Sinalo Jafta, Marizanne Kapp, Ayabonga Khaka, Lizelle Lee, Nonkululeko Mlaba, Tumi Sekhukhune, Andrie Steyn, Chloé Tryon, Laura Wolvaardt.

Fixtures:

1st ODI: 11 July, The County Ground, Northampton
2nd ODI: 15 July, Bristol County Ground, Bristol
3rd ODI: 18 July, The Uptonsteel County Ground, Leicester
1st T20I: 21 July, The Cloudfm County Ground, Chelmsford
2nd T20I: 23 July, Blackfinch New Road, Worcester
3rd T20I: 25 July, The Incora County Ground, Derby