West Indies Women’s captain Hayley Matthews believes her team can draw valuable lessons from their 2-1 T20I series loss to India as they gear up for the three-match ODI series starting Sunday.
Despite a heavy 60-run defeat in the decisive third T20I on Thursday at the DY Patil Stadium in Mumbai, Matthews sees opportunities for growth in the challenges her team faced.
India’s dominant batting performance in the final T20I, again spearheaded by captain Smriti Mandhana (77), and Richa Ghosh (54) saw the hosts amass 217-4, while their disciplined bowling attack restricted the West Indies to 157-9.
Though it was a tough loss to take, Matthews acknowledged that her side fell short in execution, particularly with the ball.
“Yeah, I think it just probably came down to execution again today. We had really strong plans, but India also went back and obviously did some homework as well. Kudos to the way their players came out and batted. Smriti obviously had a great series, but her knock today was probably the best one,” Matthews said in a post-match press conference.
“Having to bowl at Richa at the end was quite difficult. You felt almost as if you didn’t land it on a penny; it was going to be pretty hard to stop her from scoring. But yeah, at the same time we probably feel like we do need to be a bit more disciplined with the ball. But look, a series like this is going to help us to learn a lot, and hopefully that's what we take from this,” she added.
Despite the series loss, Matthews pointed to the positives her team could take forward, particularly their ability to post competitive scores.
“With the bat, there’s still a lot of positives we can take out of it. We’ve been able to score runs, which is crucial in any format. In the last match, getting to 160 for one shows that we’ve got the capability within the dressing room to put big totals on the board. Hopefully, we can carry that into the ODIs as well,” she noted.
The captain also stressed the importance of discipline with the ball, especially in curbing India’s aggressive batting.
“When we were really disciplined with the ball, we were able to get the Indian batters to try different things. That’s going to be key in the ODIs as well. We know they’re going to want to score, and we have to find a way to make that as difficult as possible,” Matthews declared.
Though the upcoming ODI series presents new challenges, including adapting to unfamiliar conditions and managing a demanding schedule, Matthews remains optimistic that quick turnaround between matches is an opportunity to improve swiftly.
“It can be tiring, but that’s the nature of it these days. I kind of like the back-to-back games within a few days because it gives you an opportunity to get back and right your wrongs a lot quicker. So we’re definitely going to pay a lot of attention to the resting and recovery process,” she said.
“Hopefully we get our travel over with pretty early tomorrow, recover really well, and get our minds and bodies ready for that first ODI match because we’ll need to assess conditions quickly and accurately,” Matthews ended.