Last chance for Windies Women

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TAUNTON – West Indies Women face the monumental task of turning around their disastrous ICC Women’s World Cup campaign when they take on a strong New Zealand Women in their make-or-break fourth game here Thursday.

The Twenty20 World Cup champions are winless in three outings in the tournament and are yet to win a single match on tour after losing all five of their warm-up fixtures.

Another defeat at Somerset County Ground here will surely put them out of semi-final contention but captain Stafanie Taylor said her side were still confident of winning their remaining matches.

“We’re still in it. We have four more games to go and we have beaten those teams before,” the Jamaican stroke-maker said.

“We know it’s not going to be easy with teams having wins under their belt so their confidence levels are pretty high but I can assure you that going forward we’re going to give it our best.”

Tipped as one of the outsiders at the start of the tournament, the Windies have been far from their best and currently languish at the bottom of the eight-team standings.

They opened with an eight-wicket defeat to reigning champions Australia Women, followed up with a seven-wicket loss to India Women before going down by ten wickets to South Africa Women last Sunday.

That performance proved their worst of the lot, bowled out for 48 – their second-lowest score ever in One-Day Internationals.

With the defeat serving as a wake-up call, Windies management are hoping it can trigger a response which would see the team end the tournament strongly.

Taylor said she had already seen an increase in intensity in training sessions while the mood in the camp remained upbeat.

“We’ve been a bit disappointing for the last three games in how we’ve been playing but the mood is very good,” she explained.

“I really like how the girls came out and practiced and we’re really trying to put the past games behind us and move on. We had our training session and we look ready so we hope we can come tomorrow [today] and put in a good performance.” (CMC)