Hayley Matthews Dominates World Champs in Unlikely West Indies Victory

This time around, the world champs were no match for Hayley Matthews.

Twenty-four hours after scoring 99 in a losing cause, Matthews returned to strike a magnificent 132 to propel West Indies Women to an unlikely seven wicket victory over Australia on Monday and level the three-match series at 1-1.

Playing at the North Sydney Oval, the visitors successfully chased down Australia’s challenging total of 212-6 from 20 overs, finishing on 213 for 3 off 19.5 overs, the highest successful run chase of all-time in Women’s Twenty20 Internationals.

The 25-year-old West Indies captain cracked 20 fours and five sixes from 64 balls in a breathtaking assault on the Australian bowling.

It followed Matthews’ tidy bowling spell of three for 36 from her allotted four overs with her off-spin after the home side was put in to bat and made her a shoo-in for a seventh straight Player-of-the-Match award in T20s.

Matthews’ second T20I hundred surpassed fellow Barbadian all-rounder Deandra Dottin for the highest score in this format for West Indies Women.

Dottin held the record for the past 13 years after her amazing 112 not out off 40 balls against South Africa Women at Warner Park in St Kitts at the 2010 Women’s T20I World Cup. It was the first T20 hundred by a man or woman on the international stage.

Matthews also took down another Dottin record for the most runs in boundaries in a Women’s T20I, eclipsing her compatriot’s seven fours and nine sixes against the Proteas in that World Cup innings in Basseterre.

Fortune favoured Matthews on 30 when Megan Schutt dropped her at deep point off pacer Annabel Sutherland before Phoebe Litchfield, the Aussies’ batting hero from earlier in the day, put down a regulation chance at cover when she was on 87 off leg-spinner Georgia Wareham.

To a standing ovation before a modest crowd, Matthews brought up her hundred from 53 balls when she drove a delivery from Schutt, bowling her right-arm medium-pace, through backward point before taking a four and a six off the next two balls.

Her predecessor as West Indies Women’s captain, Stafanie Taylor supported with 59 from 41 balls and shared a record-breaking 174 for the second wicket, to put the Caribbean side firmly on track before Schutt bowled her with 28 needed from 18 balls to give Australia a sliver of hope.

The stand was the highest for West Indies Women for any wicket in women’s T20Is, breaking the record of 162 unbroken between Matthews and Chedean Nation against Ireland four years ago in Dublin.

Matthews carried her side to within reach of victory with her dizzying batting, hitting Jess Jonassen for four consecutive fours in the 19th over, before the left-arm spinner bowled her behind her back with the penultimate ball of the same over.

West Indies needed nine from the last seven balls of the match, and Chinelle Henry and Shemaine Campbelle, both not out on four, made sure that the efforts of Matthews and Taylor were not ruined, scrambling two to long-on from the off-spin of Ashleigh Gardner to seal the result with one ball left.