In the face of a struggling batting line-up that led to West Indies Women suffering their third defeat in as many T20 International matches against India, the Caribbean skipper, Anisa Mohammed thinks her side fell “20-30 runs short,” while key all-rounder Chinelle Henry believes they have enough match winners to signal a turn around in the five-match series.
In the third T20I at the National Stadium, Providence on Thursday night, West Indies Women were restricted to a paltry 59-9, their lowest score in an uninterrupted match. And despite losing three early wickets , India still clinched the series by reaching 60-3 in 16.4 overs.
After the match, Mohammed said, “I think we fell short by 20-30 runs but having said that I think the bowlers did really well to take the game down so far… we know we have a strong bowling team and I think if we had that few more runs our bowlers could have worked with that.”
Over the course of the series, Mohammed had been calling on the girls to step up with the bat but that proved futile as they have scored 101, 103 and 59 in the three matches so far.
Once again, she threw out a call for the batters to come to the party while stating, “I think our batters need to be a bit more patient and bat until the end, you can’t have bowlers batting much of the overs.”
Nevertheless, the captain believes that the team can pull through and finish the series 3-2 which looks better than 5-0, an opinion also shared by Henry.
Henry was one of two batters to reach double figures during the West Indies Women’s innings on Thursday.
Henry said, “Sitting in the dugout before I went to bat I realized the spinners were really getting up and it was just basic tactics, keep your eyes on the ball, hit through the line and once you did that it was pretty easy to score so it was analyzing and applying as best as possible.”
The 24-year-old rubbished criticisms centred on the absence of a few “key players” but praised her side for having other key players..
“To be honest, I think we have enough key players in the squad to really go out there and put up a fight, yes two key players are out, tough luck for them but still we have enough key players to come out and dominate this cricket,” Henry said.
Henry noted, “The bigger picture is World Cup, I think most of us need to reflect and just continue to work hard, coming next year’s World Cup in Australia we definitely will go out there and play better cricket”
She pointed out that in this series for them to build momentum and close the year on a positive note they “need to look back, dig deep in ourselves for the comeback…” adding, “India have already won the series but the next two games is a chance for us to come back and play the cricket we know to play.”
