Adelaide, Feb 1 (IANS): South Africa women's head coach Hilton Moreeng believes his team is just on the up in the shortest format despite losing the T20I series 2-1 to Australia. The Alyssa Healy-led side won the first T20I, before South Africa bounced back in the second game.

After defeating Australia for the first time in women’s T20Is by six wickets, South Africa raised hopes for winning the series. But Australia secured a clinical five-wicket win to win the series at Hobart.

"For us, the way we started the T20I series, we feel a bit disappointed in our changing room because we felt we've done enough to have had the results otherwise, but it's one of those that you know you're playing against a quality team, on their own conditions, where they play very well.

"They have a lot of match winners in the team and so do we, so we felt that on the day, they were on the better side when it came to the key moments in the game. Overall, there's been very good moments in the last three games. The players have gone out there, very competitive, put their best foot forward and stayed competitive.

"We can see the growth from the team - the way we're playing - it's a team that is just on the up. We take a lot of learnings from that going into the next series. We're very happy with what we've seen regarding the performance but not the end result," said Moreeng in a Cricket South Africa (CSA) release.

Despite not getting the T20I leg of the series in its’ belt, Moreeng was optimistic about South Africa’s growth in the format. "We’ve had a couple of close games in the past, where at times we dominated the game and then we lost the game in, like I said, key moments.

“We started to identify and work on a plan on how to get that right and at the end of the day when you get the result that you've been working hard to get, against the best side in the world, now you realise it's about how we put it all together and make sure we can be consistent.

"It's been a great challenge for us as a team and to be able to achieve that, to level the series and come close again in the last game, shows you that this is the level that we're at as a team. We understand where we are and there's still a couple of things we're working to improve but we're very happy with what we're seeing going forward," he added.

With the ODI series against Australia starting at the Adelaide Oval on Saturday, Moreeng remained confident in the team's abilities and their commitment to achieving their goals in the next leg of their multi-format tour.

"We just want to keep improving as a team. We've set ourselves a blueprint that we want to achieve and the consistency has been very good. Overall, the cricket that has been played over the last two years in this format has shown a good upward curve and we want to keep consistently improving on that. Everybody's looking forward to the challenge and they can't wait to get onto the park," he concluded.