West Indies Women all-rounder, Hayley Matthews, reckons it’s not the time to panic after her side suffered their second defeat of the ICC Women’s 50-over World Cup.
The Caribbean unit started off well, beating hosts New Zealand and then defending champions, England, before losing to India and then Australia.
The second heavy defeat saw West Indies Women’s net run rate taking another hit and sits at -1.233, leaving them in fifth position.
Speaking at the post-match conference, the Barbadian all-rounder reasoned, “I don’t think it is too much pressure, coming into this tournament we knew our first four games were going to be our four hardest and I think we said to ourselves if we could get two or three wins out of these first four games we will be in a really strong position and we’ve done exactly that.”
With Bangladesh, Pakistan and South Africa to come, Matthews was confident her team could come out victorious and secure a spot in the semi-finals. South Africa have won all three of their matches so far while Pakistan are yet to secure a win after four matches. Bangladesh won their first match in three tries recently.
“I think looking at the rest of the games, these are games we should expect to win and the good thing about it is the tournament is still in our hands if we can go out there and win all three of our games we will be qualifying for the semi-finals so I don’t think there is much pressure at the moment,” he said while adding “We have the kind of team that if we go out there and play our best cricket we’ll get the wins under so no pressure just going out there taking it one game at a time and performing as best as we can.”
Hayley was cognizant of Bangladesh playing well in recent times, scoring consistently but was adamant that the Caribbean ladies will be playing hard and looking to execute their plans as best as possible to secure victory.