West Indies Women Level T20I Series Against India Women with Convincing Nine-Wicket Win

West Indies Women have levelled the T20I series against India Women with a convincing nine wicket win earlier yesterday at the Dr DY Patil Sports Academy in Mumbai, India.

After losing the toss and being sent into bat, India were restricted to 159-9 in their 20 overs after a magnificent bowling display led by Deandra Dottin who took 2-14 in her four overs and held two catches. In reply, captain Hayley Matthews finished unbeaten on 85 to see the visitors finish on 160-1 in the 15th over to win with 25 balls remaining.

Having a relatively inexperienced top order backfired on the hosts as they were 48-3 in the ninth over after Dottin bowled Uma Chetry with an inswinger for four and debutant Raghvi Bist fell lbw for five. India captain and opener Mandhana maximised on her charmed life to top score with 62 runs after being dropped three times and boost the score from 73 for 3 in the 12th over to 108 for 4 in 14. West Indies applied the handbrake soon after when they dismissed Mandhana in the 14th over and then got rid of Deepti Sharma and S Sajana to leave them 113-6. Richa Ghosh took matters into her own hands and counterattacked her way to 32 from 17 balls to push the hosts up to 159-9.

Qiana Joseph made up for dropping Mandhana on 40 runs by getting the chase off to a flier after she scored 18 runs off the second over. By the end of the powerplay, West Indies were sitting comfortably on 65 without loss thanks mostly to the fireworks emanating from Joseph’s bat as she stood on 38 not out with six boundaries and two maximums struck. She wouldn’t add to that score as she skied one to the keeper Ghosh off the bowling of Saima Thakor but the dye had already been cast.

Matthews took over as the main boundary hitter and raised a 31 ball half century, her 15th in the format, becoming the third West Indian woman to score 2500 T20I runs. The winning runs were hit in the 15th over when the Barbadian crashed a ball past cover for one final boundary to level the series.

Speaking after the match, Matthews said “We probably knew we did not do as well as we wanted to do in the first game. We went back and analysed (what went wrong). The girls were really hungry to turn things around and it showed in the way we started (today). When we looked at the score, we felt we had it under control. Smriti was playing a great knock but we felt if we could finish off well, we could keep them to a respectable total. Kudos to players like Dottin (who came back and kept them down). We felt 160 was around par, we were happy with what they got in the end. Felt they got ten runs too many more than what we would have liked, but it felt like a really chaseable target.”