West Indies captain Stafanie Taylor admitted that her team needs to be more consistent with their batting in the ongoing ICC Women World Cup 2022.
The Windies just got over the line against Bangladesh Women as they won by four runs in the 17th match of the tournament at Bay Oval, Mount Manganui on Friday.
West Indies could only manage 140 runs on the board after Nigar Sultana won the toss and decided to bowl first. Shemaine Campbelle scored 53 runs from 107 balls for West Indies but apart from her none of the batters could get going for them. The Windies kept losing wickets at regular intervals and thus could not get any kind of impetus in their batting innings.
However, West Indies’ bowlers were able to come up with much better performance as they skittled out the opposition at 136 runs. Afy Fletcher and Stafanie Taylor scalped three wickets each whereas Hayley Matthews took four wickets and conceded only 15 runs in her quota of 10 overs. Thus, she was awarded the Player of the Match.
The match went down to the wire as Bangladesh needed eight runs off the final over but Stafanie Taylor was able to dismiss Fariha Trishna.
Stafanie Taylor said in the post-match presentation, “Stable and the medical personnel is taking care of her (Connell). It was sad to see her go down but we look at the bright side, it was probably for us to regroup and we did that and changed the momentum. The batters need to come to the party and we are not consistent. We have to be consistent if we are to compete in this competition. Our batting order is long, we have to come together and win games. Aly (Fletcher) was brilliant. It was her first game back after birth and she was brilliant. It is something we need to talk as a batting group, where we are and where we need to be, there’s no two ways about it. We didn’t perform well since the India game and that’s a concern for us, we can’t really go through the tournament like this.”
There is no doubt that West Indies will need to come up with a better batting show in the upcoming matches if they are to be competitive in the tourney. Scoring 140 runs was just an ordinary performance from the Windies and they will have to come up with a collective effort.
West Indies Women will next face Pakistan at Seddon Park, Hamilton on Monday.
