“We didn’t play well enough today and we got beat by a better side”: England’s shock exit from Women’s T20 World Cup
England were knocked out of the Women’s T20 World Cup following a shock defeat to the West Indies.
Despite scoring 141 runs, their highest of the tournament, England dropped five catches off opener Qiana Joseph. The West Indies, as a result, won the match in 18 overs to top Group B.
England’s head coach, Jon Lewis commented: “We didn’t execute as well as we have done in the past year or so with the ball and in the field we dropped a lot of catches and you can’t afford to drop six [five] catches.
“Unfortunately, once they got off to that good start we weren’t able to create enough pressure through the middle of the game to hold them back.”
This was the first match England played at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium, with their opening three games taking place in Sharjah.
Lewis, however, maintained, “I don’t like making excuses for reasonably straight forward chances that we should take nine times out of ten.”
England’s 141-7 seemed a strong target at the break, as Lewis noted conditions in Dubai seemed more favourable to scoring runs compared to Sharjah. Nat Sciver-Brunt anchored the innings with an unbeaten 57 off 50 balls.
Lewis suggested that skipper Heather Knight retiring hurt proved fatal to England’s efforts: “if she continued when she was batting, maybe we would have got 10 or 15 more runs and it might have been a tougher chase for the West Indies.”
Sciver-Brunt assumed the leadership role, but Knight’s experience was missed.
“I suppose it showed how much we missed her [Knight] with her not being out there, because I think she might well have been able to help those bowlers in particular a little bit more than Nat was able to in that situation. That comes with experience and she’s got a lot of experience as a captain and it’s a pretty tough job at times.”
Lewis unusually entered the field during the drinks interval before England took the wickets of Qiana Joseph and Hayley Matthews, but not before they both reached half-centuries. The run rate then briefly dropped but Deandra Dottin’s 27 off 19 convincingly saw the West Indies over the line.
Lewis commended the opposition, saying, “I thought they got it pretty much bang on tactically in terms of attacking the power play and they made it really, really tricky for us.
“The reality of the situation is we didn’t play well enough today and we got beat by a better side on the day.”
England won their opening three matches, including a statement win over South Africa. Despite being the group stage, this was effectively a quarter-final knockout game, since England, South Africa and the West Indies are level on points. As a result, the latter two will progress to the semi-finals because of their superior net run rates.
The West Indies, as group winners will play New Zealand on Friday. England, meanwhile, will not progress for the first time since 2010.
Lewis shared, “I haven’t spoken to the players about what they’ve seen and out there, they’re obviously really distraught we’ve been knocked out of a World Cup.
“Heather [Knight] will just be really frustrated because she cares so much about English cricket and this England cricket team.”
Lewis himself expressed, “I’m pretty gutted to be honest, we’ve worked incredibly hard over a long period of time working to this point.
“We’ve got a really young bowling group, and they’ll be better for this experience, whilst they might not feel that now, they will be better for this experience, and I’m pretty sure that they’ll come back a stronger team for it.”
Featured image credit: © ICC 2023
