West Indies captain Hayley Matthews said her side is “still not quite firing with the bat” after suffering a 35-run defeat to England at the ICC T20 World Cup on Wednesday.
The loss in the top-of-the-table Group Two clash denied the West Indies Women an opportunity to secure an automatic semifinal berth with a game to spare, but qualification remains within reach ahead of Saturday’s clash with Ireland.
“It’s all in our hands and I think the fact that it is all in our hands puts us in a wonderful position. I think coming into this World Cup, if you’d said to us we just have to beat Ireland in the last match and we’d have a semifinal spot, we’d have grabbed the opportunity with both hands,” Matthews said in a post match interview.
“I think we’re still not quite firing with the bat. I still haven’t got runs, Deandra still hasn’t got her runs. Chinelle looked really good today (Wednesday), which is a positive. But I certainly feel like we’re in a very, very strong place right now. And yeah, I guess the message to the team is just going to be to keep believing, keep playing some really good cricket.
“I think against a team like Ireland, if we are at our best or near to our best, we should be coming out on the right side of the result. I’m not saying anything bad about Ireland. But yeah, I think we’re pretty confident,” she explained.
The skipper also acknowledged that several key moments contributed to the defeat against England.
“With the ball, I feel like they were able to continuously get boundaries, and I think kudos to them, they played some really good shots. That’s the nature of T20 cricket nowadays.
“We probably just let ourselves down in the field a little bit. I think my catch made a massive difference not getting Heather Knight there as well,” Matthews admitted. “I feel like we did get to a stage in the game where we just wanted to make sure that our net run rate was kept pretty stable, as that’s going to be really important when we go into this last match against Ireland.”
The top ranked allrounder also shed more light on the circumstances surrounding her highly contentious dismissal, following a review. Matthews was given out caught behind and said while she respects the decision of the umpires, she did not edge the ball.
“When I cut at the ball, I heard something which I thought was probably my bat handle or something like that, and I immediately went to the on-field umpires and told them that I heard a noise. But I certainly felt like I was far away from the ball, and I let them know what the case was.
“But the third umpire obviously has a decision to make. I felt like you could have seen a clear gap between bat and ball, but at the same time, she’s got to work with the technology that there is, and she saw a spike. At the end of the day, I’m going to have to respect that,” she explained.
(KH)
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