It takes some courage to try something new against Marizanne Kapp, especially in the Powerplay. Not one to be ruffled by reputation, Smriti Mandhana, a batting alpha in her own right, attempted to experiment with a shot she had been practising for a while in the nets: the scoop.

A couple of afternoons earlier, Mandhana attempted the same shot behind the stumps in one of her long batting sessions. Some hit the middle, some missed it. The shot was surely unnatural for her, often delivered awkwardly. Yet she persisted with it, willing to get uncomfortable in her bid to evolve her craft and fine-tune the missing pieces in her game.

It made sense on a surface that did end up playing a bit slow on match day. Having driven, pulled and flicked three boundaries, more natural shots in her game, she attempted the unfamiliar.

On training day, one of those scoops had missed contact and hit her on the left shoulder, forcing her to abort practice. On match day, it missed and rattled her stumps, ending an 11-ball stay and triggering India's batting collapse.

The attempt to experiment against Marizanne Kapp had failed.

Kapp took off with an indignant roar and a stare.

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Kapp had turned up unwell on the day of the big game. "I was a little bit ill in the warm up. I just didn't feel well at all. After all my points into the changing room, even cried a bit," she confessed after the game.

But, on the field, she put on a face she usually does. Shabnim Ismail doesn't like to call it "angry", she terms it "fiesty". But Kapp has heard it too many times to deny it.

"People always say I'm so angry when I play cricket," Kapp says, scoring 10/10 on self-reflection. "Show me a bowler who's going to smile when somebody scores a six or a fifty. I actually get annoyed at bowlers smiling and getting hit for fours and sixes."

Much of that anger started spilling out after a flick from Mandhana went past a diving mid on. But soon after that, with the ball starting to grip, she came round the wicket and delivered a seam-up straight on the line of the stumps. Mandhana missed. From that point on, India's early momentum started to slip.

And the angry mask came on again. Explaining her reaction to the dismissal, Kapp said, "It's always a challenge bowling to Smriti. She's a wonderful batter. I've fought a lot of fights with her with the ball out there in the middle. So it was good to strike because even though the Indian team started off well, they kept on losing wickets. We knew if we can continue taking wickets, we (can) slow them down. They are just being in that fight and knowing how important the wicket is."

But there was more to her spell than the theatrics and the wicket of Mandhana. As the rest of the bowlers, including Ismail, were getting plundered in the Powerplay, Kapp kept her lines tight. Even after the ball stopped swinging, she gave very little away: precisely three boundaries. When Shafali Verma departed in the last over of the Powerplay, India were still cruising at nearly 10-an-over. But Kapp had conceded just 21 from her three.

Eventually, Kapp's prediction turned out to be true. That 30-run opening stand was bettered only by a 33-run alliance between Harmanpreet Kaur and Deepti Sharma, coming at a significantly slower pace. Once Mandhana departed, wickets kept falling regularly, and India's innings never really gathered pace.

Heading into the last over, India were placed at 152/6, still 18 runs short of what head coach Amol Muzumdar considered par on the surface. With Richa Ghosh still in the middle, 13 balls into a scratchy innings till then, it wasn't exactly out of bounds. But Kapp, brought back on instead of Nadine de Klerk, outfoxed the dangerous batter with a slower one, ensuring India took away only six runs from the final over. It left South Africa with a relatively comfortable target of 159.

* * * * *

But that wasn't to be the end of it. In a contest that could have ended South Africa's World Cup hopes, Marizanne Kapp, South Africa's No 4. resurrected them again, bringing alive a chase that looked improbable at one point.

Kapp, the batter, had gone missing for a while in South African colours. It had been precisely eight months since she last played an innings of note in the green jersey. In T20Is, the last one came more than a year and a half ago, in the 2024 edition of the World Cup against Scotland. Against a Full Member team, it was nearly two years back.

And then she walked out on Saturday, two balls left for the Powerplay to wrap up, and the scoreboard reading a sorry 25 for 2. Laura Wolvaardt and Annerie Dercksen, fresh off a fifty, were back in the hut on a pitch assisting turn. South Africa's spin woes in the tournament still needed answers, and India's spinners were yet to be fully unleashed.

"It's sometimes so difficult batting those periods of a T20 game because you almost can't go too hard because you can't afford to lose another wicket," Kapp admitted.

Three overs later, a comfortable required rate had soared past 10-an-over. Someone had to take a chance. So, Kapp got going. Her experience took on the leg-spin of debutant Prema Rawat. In her first attack, she made some room and carved over covers for a boundary. The second was a hard sweep, bursting past an outstretched Nandni Sharma at deep square leg, and over the ropes.

Those early attempts to attack were fraught with risk, for her partner Tazmin Brits as well. But as the partnership flourished, the timing got better, and the Indian bowlers kept running out of ideas. Deepti, the most experienced of the lot, ended up registering her second-most expensive figures in a World Cup game.

"We obviously - with the bat - didn't get off to a great start, but I felt like that partnership and with Taz and her innings just stabilised the chase a little bit," Kapp said. "We just kept on saying 'We don't let it go too far past 10 runs an over'. We know we can catch up, especially with the players that are still out in the dugout.

"The biggest thing at that stage was just getting a bit of a partnership. We knew if we got ourselves in, we could catch up at the back end. So at first, it was just about building that partnership, and 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 because as soon as we started being a bit more positive, balls went into the gaps, into the boundaries."

Much like Mandhana, Kapp isn't the biggest employer of the sweep, but to counter the slow surface, she put it to good use on the day. As the partnership prospered, it became easier to find the timing and score, she confessed. Clearly, Indian batters didn't get to find that.

The partnership flourished to 97 runs, and set up an exciting finale, which had its one final twist. Shafali and Shree Charani, two bowlers who had rather impressive outings, struck twice in quick succession.

With 22 needed off 13 balls, the game promised to go down till the end. But Kapp had run out of reserves for the entertainment she could provide on the day. She smoked Deepti for 16 runs in the penultimate over, and made the rest a formality.

It was a day, the best version of all-rounder Kapp was on show: a clutch player for the big game, turning up with both bat and ball. For as outstanding as she has been all through her 16-year-career, she personally put this performance right up there. "Probably my best T20 innings that I've played, especially against the quality Indians attack on this specific wicket, that probably suits them a bit more."

The performance has not just helped South Africa win the key contest, but strengthened their semifinal hopes after having endured two underwhelming performances, given them hope and optimism to close out the remaining two matches of the league stage without slipping up.

"We seem to always start a bit slow and a bit shaky, especially in World Cups. We've never had a World Cup, even the last three where we made the finals, where we just came in and smashed every game. It was just about getting over the line. Even today we still haven't played our best cricket. There's still people like Wolfie (Wolvaardt) that's not fired. That's the good thing about our team. I can't say there's one player that has actually really been performing every single game."

The imperfection of the team's win reflected as much Kapp's own performance; for as fine as it was, it wasn't flawless, but still good enough to get them over the line. She was dropped thrice, two of which were spilled by Radha Yadav, arguably India's best fielder.

The result of that was obvious: what happens when you drop Kapp thrice?

As she showed on Saturday, Kapp is not the player you experiment against and try finding answers to your curiosities; especially when she is "angry".