Afy Fletcher: ‘West Indies are here for business, not just a joyride’

A quick rethink after their disappointing tournament opener put West Indies’ T20 World Cup campaign back on track with a comprehensive victory over Scotland.

Having lost by 10 wickets to South Africa, West Indies won by six wickets with 50 balls to spare at Dubai International Stadium on Sunday night. That was after Chinelle Henry‘s opening four-over burst yielded 1 for 10 and restricted Scotland to 27 for 2 after seven overs. Afy Fletcher, their 37-year-old legspinner, then took 3 for 22 to restrict them to 99 for 8 and it could have been worse for Scotland had West Indies held their catches.

Qiana Joseph marshalled the run-chase with 31 off 18 balls while Henry chipped in with 18 off 10 and Deandra Dottin finished it style with 6-4-6 off Abtaha Maqsood, over long-off, reverse-swept through backward point and pummelled over deep midwicket.

“The first game didn’t go to plan,” Fletcher said. “No one wants to lose but, at the end of the day, you have to have a winner. It didn’t go the way we wanted so we go back to the drawing board as all teams do, and we look at areas that we really need to work on and execute. We’ve come out with strong plans and I think the team gave a strong performance throughout the game, and the result was really good.

“After the first loss, we were a bit down. But from the night itself, we picked ourselves up and we got together and motivated each other and said, ‘look, we’re here, not just to come on a joyride or anything but we’re here for business, we’re here to play hard and tough cricket’. So we just got our thoughts together to see how we could bring our best game for the other games.”

It was Scotland’s second defeat in as many matches after they lost the opening match of the tournament to Bangladesh by 16 runs in Sharjah. There, they struggled with the searing heat and a rash of dropped catches.

“We were all quite disappointed in our own way with the Bangladesh game,” said batter Lorna Jack-Brown. “It was a great experience for us to be at a World Cup and a lot of nerves were there in the team but I think tonight we didn’t really have that, we believed that we could come in and really cause an upset. It never went our way tonight but that’s T20 cricket.

“We’ve got a couple more games and we always look to improve, and we’re up against world-class players here. We are here to compete, we are here to play cricket, competitive cricket, but we’re also here to learn. Not a lot of our girls have come up against world-class players and it’s an exciting prospect to be here, and even more exciting if we can take some learnings away from it and put those into our games.”

Scotland were very good in the field, holding a number of difficult catches to show that their joint mission to learn and show their skills at this tournament was also on track.

Priyanaz Chatterji held onto an excellent diving catch at short fine leg to end Joseph’s innings and Olivia Bell took a sharp caught-and-bowled to remove Shemaine Campbelle cheaply while Hayley Matthews, the West Indies captain, managed just 8 before she was taken by opposite number Kathryn Bryce, running in from mid-on to complete a strong, low catch.

“After the last match, where we had a bit of trouble with our catching, a lot of the girls went to training last night and did some catching under the lights because it’s a different ball-game under the lights,” Jack-Brown said. “So they’ve done quite well and taken their learnings from the Bangladesh game.

“It’s just about volume. You know how to catch, it’s just different in the lights. Probably in the Bangladesh game, the nerves were there and the conditions and everything, you’ve got to think about quite a lot of things. We just went back to basics, just get under the ball and hopefully your hands will take it.”