Despite being one of the favourites for the Women’s T20 World Cup in the UAE with some of the best players in the world, England crashed out of the group stages, finishing third on net run-rate in their group. After winning their first three matches, a final day loss to the West Indies saw them fail to qualify for the semifinals.
England coach Tony Lewis was disappointed with the performance of his team, but also took issue with the alleged favouritism shown towards India in the tournament in a fiery tirade against the organisation.
Lewis’s comments came following a revelation that India were given leeway to practice in Sharjah proper, while the other teams had to make use of the secondary ICC Academy ground to warm-up for their matches. Only Dubai International Stadium and Sharjah are being used as venues in this tournament.
“No one’s had an opportunity to train here (Dubai International Stadium). We’ve been training in the ICC Academy down the road,” said Lewis to Wisden following England’s elimination. “I didn’t know they did that [train in Sharjah]. I didn’t know. India can pretty much do what they like, can’t they? Is that how it works?” said the English coach in a furious comment.
Reportedly, India weren’t the only team to make use of the ground, with Scotland also making use of the resource. An ICC official confirmed to ESPNcricinfo that this wasn’t an opportunity open just for India. “All other teams had the opportunity of training in Sharjah like India did on that day,” they were quoted as saying.
‘The reality is…’
England batted well against the West Indies to put up a total of 141, but the Windies were able to bite back with a successful chase with one over left. For England, the issues stemmed from a host of dropped catches and lapses in the field, taking the result away from them despite solid performances from some of their stars.
“The reality is we didn’t play well enough today and we got beaten by a better side on the day,” said Lewis about the loss. “That’s sport and that’s World Cup sport and it’s a knockout game. We knew that coming into the game, so, we’ll dig into that and we’ll work out why that is, and we’ll try and move the team forward from there.”
The semifinals are set, with West Indies playing against New Zealand and Australia playing against South Africa in a rematch of the 2023 World Cup final.
