West Indies are waiting on injury updates for a couple of key players ahead of their next women’s T20 World Cup match, against Scotland on Sunday, where they will try to put their campaign back on track.
Several other players also looked like they were struggling in the intense heat of Dubai, were temperatures soared to 38° Celsius.
“It is pretty hot here,” Matthews agreed. “I have to say probably the hottest place I’ve ever played cricket, or have ever been on the whole, and I mean, that’s someone coming from the West Indies. Definitely some difficult conditions but we’ve been here for about two weeks now, thankfully, so we’ve been able to acclimatise as much as we possibly can with conditions like this. Thankfully we’ve got the rest of our games as night ones so I hope not as much sun.”
Speaking about the pitch, where West Indies struggled pretty much all the way through their innings, Matthews said, “We came down here probably expecting some pretty good wickets. We camped here quite a bit before we went to Pakistan in April and we tend to spend a bit of time down here in training, so we knew what the ICC Academy grounds are like and those were pretty decent wickets early on so that’s what we’re expecting.
“It wasn’t a bad wicket today, I think South Africa showd that you can really bat on a wicket like that, even us in parts. Stafanie Taylor was able to really take charge of the game as well throughout the middle, so I don’t think the conditions surprised us too much, we probably just didn’t adapt to them as well.”
With Matthews and Deandra Dottin both falling cheaply, for 10 and 13 respectively to Marizanne Kapp inside the first seven overs, Taylor proved crucial in West Indies putting up some fight in the face of Nonkululeko Mlaba’s career-best 4 for 29.
“She’s a huge part of us and she has been to West Indies cricket from 2008,” Matthews said of Taylor. “Her importance within the team has never gone down, it’s probably only gone up more and more as the years have gone on so it was great to see her out in the middle today.
“I think she still has a lot of doubters over the last few years so I think it was great that she could go out there and stand up and put her hand up when we were where in trouble. Once again the conditions, it’s obviously pretty hot, so it was hard to watch her stand up out there and fight but still good to see at the same time that she showed a lot of character with it.”
Valkerie Baynes is a general editor, women’s cricket, at ESPNcricinfo
Source: ESPN Crickinfo