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Ahead of their second women’s T20 World Cup match against Scotland on Sunday, where they will look to restart their campaign, the West Indies are awaiting details on the injuries of a few important players.
When opening bowler Zaida James attempted a return catch off Laura Wolvaardt, the ball deflected off her hand and onto her face, further deteriorating a ten-wicket loss to South Africa in Dubai on Friday. South Africa started their chase of 119 with 13 balls remaining, and it was the opening ball of the second over. James departed from the field, but she was later saw sitting with a bandage on her chin on the sidelines.
A brave 44 not out from 41 balls was scored by Stafanie Taylor, who appeared to be in some difficulty as well. It turned out that she had been experiencing knee pain. On Saturday morning, she was scheduled to get a medical assessment prior to training.
“Zaida for sure, I know, it was pretty much just a knock on her face,” Hayley Matthews, West Indies’ captain, said immediately after the match. “I think the seam might have hit her on her face so she was in a bit of discomfort and [had] a bit of swelling around her jaw. But she’s a tough girl, so hopefully that’s just one of those knocks that you get on the field and she hopefully will be able to be back up for the next match.”
Several other players also looked like they were struggling in the intense heat of Dubai, were temperatures soared to 38° Celsius.
“It is pretty hot here,” Matthews agreed. “I have to say probably the hottest place I’ve ever played cricket, or have ever been on the whole, and I mean, that’s someone coming from the West Indies. Definitely some difficult conditions but we’ve been here for about two weeks now, thankfully, so we’ve been able to acclimatise as much as we possibly can with conditions like this. Thankfully we’ve got the rest of our games as night ones so I hope not as much sun.”
Speaking about the pitch, where West Indies struggled pretty much all the way through their innings, Matthews said, “We came down here probably expecting some pretty good wickets. We camped here quite a bit before we went to Pakistan in April and we tend to spend a bit of time down here in training, so we knew what the ICC Academy grounds are like and those were pretty decent wickets early on so that’s what we’re expecting.