Commonwealth Games 2022: India played brilliantly, their batters spent time at crease: Hayley Matthews
India Today
India defeated Barbados by 100 runs to join Australia, England and New Zealand in the semi-finals. The victory margin was India's second-highest by runs in T20Is.
Barbados captain Hayley Matthews conceded that India played brilliantly in their final women's cricket group match at the 2022 Commonwealth Games.
India defeated Barbados by 100 runs to join Australia, England and New Zealand in the semi-finals. The victory margin was India's second-highest by runs in T20Is.
Jemimah Rodrigues's unbeaten 56 and a 26-ball 43 by Shafali Verma helped India post 162 for the loss of four wickets. In reply, Barbados had no answer as Renuka Singh rattled the top order to return with the figures of 4/10 in her four-overs quota. Barbados were eventually restricted to 62 for the loss of eight wickets.
"I think they (India) absolutely would have played brilliantly. A lot of their batters spent a lot of time at the crease. Yeah, as we expected them to do," Matthews said after the match.
"I think going into the game we were hoping to keep them somewhere around 150, and they got just slightly over that (India scored 162 runs). So, probably a bit disappointed with our top four batters - that we weren't able to necessarily get as many runs as we wanted to. But like I said, still so much to take away from it."
Barbados represented West Indies at the Commonwealth Games after the Cricket West Indies picked them on the basis of being the 2019 T20 Blaze winners. When asked if she was disappointed on not reaching the last-four stage, Matthews said: "I don't think it's a disappointing thing at all.
"I think coming out here, we definitely exceeded expectations. We're coming out here as a nation with probably about 300,000 people and playing against countries with millions and millions of people. So, I think for us to come down here and be able to win a game in a competition like this is massive. And there's so much that we've taken from it, there's so much that we've learned from it, and I definitely think it's going to help cricket to grow in Barbados."
