We have heard the phrase ‘one man or woman army’ umpteenth number of times when an individual leaves behind his/her teammates with some exceptional feat in a team game and 19-year-old Shania-Lee literally justified the above phrase as she made all the runs that were scored by her team with the bat.

Playing for Mpumalanga Women U-19 team against Easterns Women Under-19 in a Cricket South Africa (CSA) Girls T20 match at Pretoria on Monday (December 11), Swart played a blistering knock of 160 off only 86 balls while her teammates cut a sorry figure throughout the innings as not even a single player could open her account. Mpumalanga’s innings featured eight ducks, three of which were first ball ducks while No.10 batter Nicholate Phiri remained not out on zero. Besides Swart’s 160, there were nine extras in her team’s total of 169 for 8 in the given 20 overs.

The score proved more than enough as Easterns Women’s team could only score 127 for 6. Swart once again starred for her team as she opened the bowling and took 2 for 21 from her four overs.

One can take a measure of this incredible feat from the fact that New Zealand captain Kane Williamson, who holds the record for the highest percentage of runs scored in a completed T20 international innings, scored 70 percent of New Zealand’s total against Sri Lanka in the 2014 World T20 when he scored 42 runs off New Zealand’s total of 60. On the other hand, Swart scored a mind-boggling 95 percent of her team’s total.

Brief scores:

Mpumalanga: 169 for 8 in 20 overs (Shania-Lee Swart 160*; Tumi Sekukune 5 for 15, Rode de Neysschen 1 for 18, Dieketseng Nchapelen 1 for 56) beat Easterns: 127 (Carmen Nagel 63, Rode de Neysschen 19, Tumi Sekukune 10; Shania-Lee Swart 2 for 21; Jammie de Vos 1 for 34, Njabulo Nkabinde 1 for 10).