England Women beat West Indies 2-1 by International Cricket Council

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Scorecard:	West Indies Women v England Women
Event:	England Women in West Indies 2016/17, ICC Women's Championship 2014 to 2016/17

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DateLine: 20th October 2016

 

England has defeated the West Indies by five wickets in the third and final match of their ICC Women’s Championship (IWC) series to complete an impressive 2-1 victory in the Caribbean.

 

England, which secured a comfortable 112-run win in the opening match but went down by 42 runs in the second match, has leapfrogged the West Indies and New Zealand to reach second place in the points table.

 

England started a point behind the West Indies at 19 points and goes up to 23 points following the series. The West Indies moves up from 20 to 22 points with New Zealand at fourth place on 20 points. England’s series win also means that table leader Australia emerged the first ever IWC winner since no one is in a position to overtake its tally of 30 points.

 

England, the West Indies and New Zealand have a strong chance of finishing in the top four with fifth-placed South Africa left to defeat Australia 3-0 to remain in contention since it has 17 points. All five teams have played18 matches each out of 21.

 

The top four teams from the IWC gain direct qualification for the ICC Women’s World Cup 2017 while the bottom four will have to qualify through the ICC Women’s World Cup Qualifier 2017 in February from which four teams will advance for the showpiece event in England and Wales from 26 June to 23 July.

 

England captain Heather Knight was delighted after her team’s win in an away series.

 

“I’m really happy with how we have stood up and delivered a strong, winning performance in the final match of the series today. To come to the Caribbean and beat the ICC Women’s World T20 champions on their home patch, in tough conditions, and with a couple of setbacks along the way, shows how much character, desire and talent there is within this squad.

 

“Throughout the five matches, momentum has constantly shifted between the two sides, which shows how evenly matched the teams are. It is a brilliant feeling to win the series decider today, and I know that we will all take a lot of belief and confidence from this experience,” Knight said.

 

England won the first match after fine knocks from Lauren Winfield (79) and Natalie Sciver (58) helped put up a total of 220 but the next match saw it lose the plot chasing a target of 224 due to five run outs.

 

“We are learning and growing as a squad all the time, and we are already looking forward to the next challenge of taking on Sri Lanka in Colombo next month. We are well-placed in the ICC Women’s Championship table, and hopefully we will put in some strong performances again out there to secure our place in the ICC Women’s World Cup next summer.”

 

West Indies captain Stafanie Taylor, who starred in her team’s only win with an innings of 85 and also came up with a fighting 57 in the final match on Wednesday, indicated that not everyone in her team had been taking enough responsibility.

 

“I don’t think we gave the fight we wanted to give, I don’t think we had the intention. With England coming here, we did not make our presence felt. As players we need to take a lot more responsibility for our actions, not leave it to one or two people,” said Taylor, who moved up two slots in the batter’s list to third position in the MRF Tyres ICC ODI Women’s Player Rankings.

 

The world’s top all-rounder, who also moved up two slots in the list for bowlers to reach second place, said her team’s batting had been a weak point in the series.

 

“We fell down a few times earlier, here too, batting first time we got 200 runs once. It’s poor, you want to dominate when you are playing at home. In the final match, if we had aimed for 190 we could have changed the game. It was a good batting pitch, it was just for us to apply ourselves,” she said in reference to the team total of 155 in the last match.

 

“We’re still in a decent position. We have one more series to go, so we are not counting ourselves out. Going forward, we have to pull it back, get some points. It’s going to be tough (playing India) in the sub-continent, nothing is quite easy out there. We have to dig deep to get points there,” she said.

 

(Article: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author only.
Copyright © 2016 International Cricket Council)