Failure with the willow overshadowed the inspiring bowling performance from the spinners as Bangladesh women’s cricket team suffered a 36-run defeat in their debut match of the ICC World T20 against West Indies at the Sylhet International Stadium yesterday.
In front of a boisterous home crowd, Bangladesh bowled out West Indies on 115 runs but their batting weaknesses were exposed and Windies bowlers bowled Bangladesh out on 79. Bangladesh lost the last six wickets in only nine runs. The inexperience of the side were visible as they failed to cope with the pressure.
The beginning with bowling, mostly relied on the spinners, and fielding against an in-form West Indies side was the positive sides and skipper Salma Khatun gave the hosts a bright start. Salma in her second delivery of the first over gave the hosts early breakthrough trapping Kycia Knight for LBW for a naught. Following the early wicket, Bangladesh piled more pressure on the opponents and it didn’t take them long to take the second one when Fahima Khatun bowled other opener Shaquana Quintyne on 11 in her first over.
Bangladesh spinners continued to take wickets on regular basis except West Indies’ highest partnership of 40 in the fifth wicket between Deandra Dottin and Stacy-Ann King. Dottin was not on her usual aggressive mode but contributed the most scoring a run-a-ball 3 while Stacey added 20. Khadija Tul Kubra picked up three wickets giving away 24 while Salma Khatun and Fahima Khatun took two each for 11 and 12 runs respectivley.
It took West Indies bowlers six overs to break the opening stand between Ayasha Rahman and Sanjida Islam although they only managed to add 19 runs in that time. After player-of-the-match Quintyne bowled Ayasha, Bangladesh continued to lose wickets and it spread like a virus when they lost fifth wicket on 72. They lost six wickets to reach 79 from 72 between the gaps of 16 balls.
Salma Khatun admitted in the post-match conference they need to work more to improve their batting. “Our bowling and fielding was good but as I said before our problem in batting has not improved. We could not utilize the power play and we need to work on it,”
“I really don’t know why our batsmen are not getting run. If they get into runs I believe we can beat any team,”
Bangladesh will play their second game against England tomorrow at 3.30pm.
In the other match of the day England beat India by five wickets. England bundled India out on 95 and scored 96 for five 18.1 overs.