BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – West Indies captain Stafanie Taylor believes the recent drawn series against South Africa has highlighted the need for her side to improve their consistency.
The hosts lost the first One-Day International of the three-match ICC Women’s Championship series by 40 runs but rebounded to win the decisive third contest by 115 runs here Saturday, after Wednesday’s second game was abandoned as a no-result.
“We still have way more to go. We still need to improve on our 50-over game,” Taylor said here following the impressive win in the day/night fixture at Kensington Oval. “We still need to get consistent where that is concerned. And I believe it’s just consistency. We have the players to do it, but we must work on being far more consistent.”
West Indies were installed as favourites to win the series but were stunned in their opener last Sunday when they failed to chase down a modest 202 in good conditions.
Taylor described the defeat as a “wake-up call”, forcing the side to quickly pull themselves together and focus on playing a positive brand of cricket.
“I am not 100 per cent satisfied [with the outcome of the series]. Having lost the first game, we had to go back to the drawing board because we know South Africa have evolved and they have been playing good cricket over the last few years,” the Jamaican explained. “So, [losing that first game] was a wake-up call for us – that we needed to get things going and get back to the drawing board and get back to the game we know we can play.
“In the second game, I thought we did really well to restrict them to such a total (177 for eight off 38 overs) and I believe that if that game had played until the end, it would have been good.
“[On Saturday], we just played brilliant cricket.” The match will long be remembered for a sparkling hundred by 20-year-old opener Hayley Matthews, which propelled the hosts up to 292 for five off their 50 overs.
Barbadian Matthews counted 17 boundaries in 117 off 146 balls – her maiden international century – and Taylor was full of praise for her teammate.
“Hayley played a splendid innings. I thought her thought process … was remarkable. It started earlier when she came to the ground, she went straight into the nets hitting balls. Then straight after warm-up before we batted, she hit some balls so we knew she was ready and up for the fight.
“I thought she batted really, really well to get us to that total which helped us to win the game.”
She continued: “When she got into the 80s I noticed she was feeling a bit of cramps. I knew around that might be some nerves as well so I said to her ‘just dig in, you need 20. Just count down.’
“It was just about telling her ‘keep the energy going, you’re batting well, you’re playing straight’, positive stuff that could help her get over that mark.”
