If there's one thing we've learnt from South Africa's box-office win over India in the T20 World Cup, it's that Marizanne Kapp thrives when she is up against it. Or angry. Or ill. And that's she's at her best when she is a combination of all three.
South Africa's champion allrounder played what she called "my best innings", after also delivering a stand-out bowling performance that had limited India to an attainable score. And all that, after she had had a dressing-room wobbly just before the game. So what happened?
"I was actually a little bit ill in the warm-up and I went into the change-room and just cried a bit," Kapp said at the post-match conference.
She didn't give away whether her health scare was bad enough to potentially rule her out of the game. However, it explained her pained expression at the national anthem, as well as the concern with which her wife Dane van Niekerk, who was also in the XI, looked at her as they sung the final bars, and her lack of celebration when she took the first wicket.
Kapp is a notoriously stern character on the field. The death stare and send-off are part of her arsenal, but only the former was present today. After being hit for 16 runs off her first 11 balls, Kapp changed her angle and went around the wicket to Smriti Mandhana, who missed a ramp and played on. As the bails lit up, Kapp bored holes into the ground as she glared, accepted only a few low-fives, and then seemed to be gesturing to the rest in annoyance, or frustration. Later, she explained it was a bit of both.
"People always say I'm so angry when I play cricket, but show me a bowler who's going to smile when someone hits them for a four or a six," she said. "I actually get annoyed when bowlers smile when they bowl wide or get hit."
Kapp had been hit for two fours, as Shafali Verma punished her for straying down leg, before Mandhana charged and flicked her past mid-on. Her two overs had gone better than Shabnim Ismail's one, in which she had been taken for three fours, let alone Chloe Tryon's first three balls, which cost 14. In those opening exchanges, South Africa looked hapless and they needed Kapp to spark something for them.
Despite her illness, Kapp kept going in the Powerplay for a third successive over and started the squeeze. Even though Yastika Bhatia hit her second ball for four, Kapp got out of the over having given away only five runs and Bhatia nearly gloved her to Sinalo Jafta. Collectively, South Africa then gave away just 26 runs in five overs to drag India back. By the time Kapp returned to bowl the last over, a projected score that had been set for 180 was there to be kept to under 160. She made sure that it was.
Kapp closed out the innings with a smart selection of slower balls and full deliveries. She dismissed the destructive Richa Ghosh off one of them and conceded only six runs off the final over. Her work could have been done there but her top-order meant she had more to do.
With Laura Wolvaardt struggling for fluency, Annerie Dercksen still getting accustomed to No.3 and Tazmin Brits playing her first match of the tournament, the responsibility was on Kapp to pace the chase post Powerplay. South Africa were 25 for 2 after the first six overs. A required run-rate of just under eight had already grown to over 9.5, and pressure was building. A boundary-less over later, it was up to 9.7 and as the 10th over began, it soared to 10.36.
Still, Kapp didn't panic. "The biggest thing at that stage was just getting a bit of a partnership," she said. "It's sometimes so difficult batting in those periods of a T20 game, because you almost can't go too hard because you can't afford to lose another wicket. We had to stabilise and build a bit of a partnership. And we knew if we got ourselves in, we could catch up at the back-end.
"So it was just, at first, building that partnership. Then, we got to a stage where I just said, 'okay, now we're going to have to start going after it' and that seemed to work for us. As soon as we started being a bit more positive, more balls went into the gaps and into the boundaries."
Kapp took on debutant Prema Rawat and identified the area behind square as the one to target. She swept and scooped the first two balls of Rawat's second over for 10 runs. In total Kapp scored a third of her runs - 27 - behind square, and 25 on the leg side, including four fours and a six.
Those shots seemed to be an addition to her game, and ones she has kept relatively well-hidden until needed.
"It's not a shot that I play every single game," she confirmed. "Sometimes, especially when it's still a wicket like today, it just felt easy going behind the wicket, because hitting down the ground wasn't that easy, especially with no pace on the ball. I just felt like it's better that I started looking at the sweep or the ramp, because the other boundaries felt extremely far and tough to clear."
She also needed to hope Brits stayed with her, and for 97 runs and 10-and-a-half overs, she did. Brits was less aggressive, and understandably so, given her time out of the side but contributed a valuable 40. By the time her own attempt at a jailbreak failed, when she pulled Shafali to Sree Charani at deep-backward square, South Africa's required rate was down to 9.25 and Kapp appeared in total control.
So much so that, even when Nadine de Klerk was bowled for 5, South Africa seemed to all but have the win. Kapp's two sixes off Deepti Sharma in the penultimate over sealed the deal and rubbed salt in the defeat, given how important Deepti is to India's cause.
In the end, when South Africa got themselves back into the tournament with a four off Chloe Tryon's edge, Kapp didn't even have the energy for a smile. Instead, she kneeled in prayer. She only let her expression change into something resembling happiness when she was in front of the camera, being interviewed about her performance. Even then, she had some serious responses.
"It's always special playing in the World Cup, and I feel like it probably brings out the best in me," she said. "I'm just so proud to be here and represent my country at another World Cup, and even to see how far women's cricket has come. The crowd today, even though they were supporting India, it was so amazing to see, and feel the love for the sport, and still being part of that is absolutely amazing. I can only imagine how it feels to go all the way, but that's not our focus at the moment. We still have two games to play, for now."
South Africa are second on the points table in their group, level with India and in a good position to finish in the top two. Their remaining fixtures are against Netherlands on Thursday and Bangladesh next Sunday. That same day, Australia will play India, which means the semi-final line-up will only be decided after the last match of the group. That's enough to make the rest of us excited and Kapp, doubtless, angry.