Who is popular today?

WEST INDIES women’s captain Stafanie Taylor says the team is down but not out following their ICC Women’s World Cup semi-final exit to Australia on Wednesday.
At Basin Reserve, Wellington in New Zealand, six-time champions Australia romped to a 157-run victory over the Windies women to secure their seventh appearance in a World Cup final.
An opening stance of 216 runs from Alyssa Healy (129) and Rachael Haynes (85) set up a strong total of 305/3 for Australia in their first innings. West Indies had a fair start from their top-order as skipper Taylor (48), Deandra Dottin and Hayley Matthews (34 each) put the Aussies to task.
However, their departure ignited a landslide as the remaining five wickets fell for just 23 runs to see West Indies dismissed for just 148 after 37 overs. Vice-captain Anisa Mohammed and Chinelle Henry were also ruled out of the batting line-up due to injury.
Taylor rues her team’s absence from the title match but said there were many positives derived from their 2022 World Cup campaign.
West Indies opened their campaign with impressive back-to-back wins over hosts New Zealand and defending champions England. They were, however, victorious in just one of three matches that followed, against Bangladesh, and luckily secured a semi-final spot owing to India’s loss to South Africa.
“We beat two of the top teams and I reckon no one expected that. And to be in the semi-finals, no one expected that. The way we played throughout the tournament has been really good.
“We had some downs and that happens. It’s about learning and I believe that we are still learning. I'm very proud of the way we played. We still have more to go, so yeah, you'll see us around,” she said.
Matthews, who was the team’s standout player for the tournament, added that the victories over the hosts and England were “things that we couldn't imagine doing a year ago.”
She was WI’s leading run-scorer with 260 at as well as their leading wicket-taker (eight).
Matthews added, “It’s just really good to be a part of the growth that this team has had over the last year and I genuinely do think that if we continue moving in this direction, there are only bigger things for us.”
She affirmed the bigger nations do have a slight competitive advantage over the Caribbean team considering their domestic structure (larger) and the amount of talent that they have to pull from within their pools.
Matthews continued, “And then you look at us competing against teams like that, it just shows the fight and the heart that we really do have as a team. When you look at the characteristics of this (WI) team, you think of people who play with their hearts on their sleeves.
“We come into every game with so much emotion and so much passion, trying to represent the WI and the Caribbean and we plan to continuously do that, all the time, try to play with us as much fight as we possibly can.”
She was proud the team showed so much fight and spirit to compete with the best in the world. Matthews though called for an increase in regional domestic cricket to widen the pool of potential cricketers for the future of the women’s game.
She closed, “The more cricket we can play at a lower level to the domestic stuff, the better. Hopefully, we can get some more young girls coming through the system.
“In this batch of players, this may be a lot of their last World Cups. It would be really good if we could start to nurture some younger players throughout the domestic cricket season and get some more people filtering into West Indies stuff.”
The post Windies captain Stafanie Taylor: We still have more to go appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.