Cricket is a humorous sport however it may be merciless at instances as properly. Think about a state of affairs the place a aspect like India, after shedding two video games in its group, was nonetheless mathematically alive within the qualification race till the final day of the league stage on the ladies’s T20 World Cup. However a aspect like England, with three wins out of 4 video games, was pushed out the door and despatched dwelling for having one horrifyingly dangerous night time on the sphere.
If one would have caught up with England head coach Jon Lewis after the loss to the West Indies away from any cameras or microphones, his phrases would have matched the utter disbelief on his face. On the press convention, he was as eloquent as he may probably be after the shock ouster, nevertheless it needed to sting. After so many months of preparation, hauling themselves to Abu Dhabi for acclimatisation, utilizing moist balls, and tweaking lineups, it should harm.
West Indies’ Aaliyah Alleyne, left, and Chinelle Henry have fun their win in opposition to England.
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AP Photograph/Altaf Qadri
West Indies’ Aaliyah Alleyne, left, and Chinelle Henry have fun their win in opposition to England.
| Photograph Credit score:
AP Photograph/Altaf Qadri
“The reality of the situation is we didn’t play well enough today and got beat by a better side on the day. So, that’s sport and that’s World Cup sport and it’s a knockout game. So even though we’re in the group stages, it’s pretty much a quarterfinal. We knew that coming into the game. I don’t quite know how the net run rate works, but we knew we had to win the game, and we did perform as well as we could. So, we’ll dig into that and we’ll work out why that is, and we’ll try and move the team forward from there,” Lewis stated after England’s six-wicket loss to the Windies on the Dubai Worldwide Stadium on Tuesday.
“I’m pretty gutted to be honest. We’ve worked incredibly hard over a long period of time working towards this point. We’ve put a lot of really good foundations into the team. We’ve grown our team over a long period of time. We’ve given lots of opportunities to lots of different people. We feel like we had a really good formula to come and play our best cricket out here but we haven’t done that today. And it’s really disappointing.
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“You put a lot of time and effort and thought into the process of getting to this point. Then you put the players out on the field and you want the players to go and play their best cricket, because you know that at their best, this group is a really good cricket team. And the bit that I suppose we didn’t quite get right today was maybe a little bit of our reacting to what the opposition were doing and obviously our execution of skill in the field. But we’ve got a really young bowling group and they’ll be better for this experience. Whilst they might not feel that now, I’m pretty sure they’ll come back stronger,” he added.
This was England’s first sport in Dubai. The 2009 World T20 champion was based mostly in Sharjah to date and had discovered the dry and sluggish circumstances there to be fairly conducive to its spectacular spin arsenal.
The aspect had not performed in Dubai ever which meant it hadn’t skilled beneath the notorious ‘Ring of Fire’ – the round floodlights at this venue. The inexperience on the floor and on the venue was evident as all three departments underperformed, thereby costing the aspect a spot within the knockouts.
“It’s the first time the girls have stepped into this stadium today. We haven’t had a chance to be in this stadium before, and I don’t like making excuses for what were reasonably straightforward chances that we should take nine times out of ten. You’ve got a wonderful fielder in Maia Bouchier who’s dropping balls there…missing balls. Sophia Dunkley is very safe under the high ball, as is Alice Capsey. Obviously, really distraught. We’ve been knocked out of a World Cup. It’s obviously something that’s been reasonably common at this stadium. For us to step into the stadium for the first time today has made it pretty tricky for some of the players out in the middle.”
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When it was pointed to him that India skilled on the major floor in Sharjah forward of its final group fixture , Lewis shrugged, “No one’s had an opportunity to train here. We’ve been training in the ICC Academy down the road. I didn’t know. India can pretty much do what they like.”
Venue managers on the ICC clarified that the choice to coach at Sharjah was open to all groups, with solely India exercising the best forward of their key group conflict. New Zealand and West Indies are anticipated to do the identical forward of their semifinal bout.
England gamers react after the loss to West Indies.
| Photograph Credit score:
AP Photograph/Altaf Qadri
England gamers react after the loss to West Indies.
| Photograph Credit score:
AP Photograph/Altaf Qadri
Knight, Lewis and England will really feel onerous completed by, after months of planning went down the drain because of three hours of poor cricket.
“Yeah, well, that’s the World Cup, isn’t it? It’s pretty brutal. So, it will take a bit of time. The players will be really reflective. We’ve got a really strong group. The group will stick together. That’s one thing they definitely will do. They work well together and they work for each other and they’ll support each other and the staff will rally around them and support them as best we can,” he stated.
“Heather would just be really frustrated because she cares so much about English cricket and this team. But again, I suppose it showed how much we missed her with her not being out there because I think she might well have been able to help the bowlers in particular a little bit more than Nat was able to in that situation. But that comes with experience and she’s got a lot of experience as a captain and it’s a pretty tough job at times. As you saw there at the end of the game, she fronts up and does the interviews and that’s quite a hard thing for her to do when she’s not been able to be out there and participate as fully as she can. And you think actually, if she continued when she was batting, maybe we might have got 10 or 15 more. It might have been a tougher chase for the West Indies, but they played some really, really good cricket tonight.”
