Brits scored 101 off 89, launching almost two-thirds of her runs in 15 fours and a solitary six ©Getty
It needed something special for South Africa to climb out of the deep, dark hole they disappeared into against England in Guwahati on Friday. And something special is what Tazmin Brits delivered in Indore on Monday to put her team's World Cup campaign back on track.
Brits scored 101 off 89, launching almost two-thirds of her runs in 15 fours and a solitary six, to do much of the winning in a six-wicket success over New Zealand. Her innings also sealed a world record.
South Africa dismissed the Kiwis for 231 and then chased down the biggest target yet made to beat them in this tournament's history with 55 balls to spare.
Brits' century followed the 109 she made against India in Colombo in April. She also scored 101 against West Indies in June, before reeling off 101 not out and an undefeated 171 against Pakistan in Lahore last month.
Monday's effort made Brits the only woman to score five ODIs hundreds in a calendar year. It was a commanding innings of thrust, power and unflinching intent that demanded to be watched. Like most of Brits' innings.
The irresistible attack she brings to the crease is laced with traces of the athlete Brits used to be; in her strident stride and spearing bat. She was the junior world javelin champion in 2007 and was on course to go to the 2012 Olympics before injuries she sustained in a car crash in November 2011 ended that ambition. Athletics' loss has been cricket's gain.
Brits' performance on Monday did more than anything else to put valuable distance between the South Africans and their abject performance against the English - when they were shot out for 69 on their way to a 10-wicket hammering.
"I'm glad we could pull this one through," Brits told a television interviewer. "We definitely needed that after the last game." She revealed that Monday was the first time she had used the willow she took to the middle: "I think it's my favourite bat from now on."
At her press conference, Brits was asked, bizarrely, what "you have been eating or doing differently this year". She took the weird question in her stride: "I don't know. I want to say maybe koeksisters." That's a South African speciality of dough that is knotted, deep-fried and soaked in sweetly spiced sugar syrup.
Even so, she couldn't be tempted with a koeksister after Friday's shambolic display: "It didn't sit well with me. I didn't want to eat that night and I overthought the process completely. But we put that in the past as quickly as possible and said we've got to move on to the next game."
Brits said she had "tried to expand my shot selection; I've been working very, very hard on that". And it's showing. Previously an almost exclusively on-side scorer, Brits has become a threat all round the ground.
But she didn't do it all on her own on Monday. Nonkululeko Mlaba was in surgical form for her 4/40. She was aided and abetted by bristling fielding - Nadine de Klerk, Sune Luus, Anneke Bosch and Laura Wolvaardt all held fine catches. None was better than Wolvaardt's flying one-hander in the covers to snare Lea Tahuhu's hard-hit drive, which appeared for all money to have passed South Africa's captain before it was suddenly, stunningly stopped.
When Brits swiped across the line to Tahuhu and was bowled with 47 needed off 114, she threw her head back in frustration. But her partner in the key partnership of 159, Luus, saw the job through with her unbeaten 83.
South Africa's net runrate after Friday's disaster was a dismal -3.773. It's still not great at -1.402, but that's a vast improvement that may yet prove crucial.
As buoyed as South Africans will be after Monday, there's no reason for them to be overly confident that their team might at long last reach a final in this format. Not with unbeaten India awaiting in Visakhapatnam on Thursday.
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