BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – Stand-in captain Stafanie Taylor has praised West Indies Women for what she has described as perhaps their best day ever in the field.
The hosts turned in a tremendous all-round effort here Wednesday to beat Sri Lanka by seven runs in the second Twenty20 International of the five-match series and take a vital 2-0 lead.
“We were amazing today (Wednesday), absolutely amazing. I would have to say this is probably the best day I have seen us in the field,” Taylor said.
“We are always a good fielding team but we really stepped it up here. Everyone was diving around and throwing themselves around to look for the catches, get those run outs and things like that.
“As a team we work very hard on our fielding and we are very aware of what we need to do in the field. As a group, we normally look for one run out per match, so to get three in one innings was special.”
Taylor’s Player-of-the-Match performance was the catalyst for the victory. She top-scored with 62 from 49 balls as West Indies posted 129 for four off their 20 overs after choosing to bat first at Kensington Oval.
She returned to take three for 23 with her off-spin, held a catch and was involved in two run outs which helped swing the game the Windies away.
“There was a lot of pressure on us. The Sri Lankans never gave up and kept coming at us, they kept in the hunt for the runs,” she explained.
“But we were very disciplined and got wickets at crucial stages throughout and that had a lot to do with the way we applied the pressure and forced then to take chances.”
West Indies will now face the Sri Lankans in the third T20I on Sunday, which will be the first game of a tripleheader at Queen’s Park Oval in Trinidad.
Taylor said the Windies would be looking to wrap up the series then.
“We now have them 2-0 so we will look to make it 3-0 on Sunday. We are not talking about a clean sweep, we are talking about winning the series and then look at what comes after,” Taylor said.
“We got over them 2-1 in the one-day series, so we know we can beat them. We believe we are stronger than them but we have to prove it by beating them convincingly.”
