Dubai, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates – West In­dies Women’s head coach, Shane Deitz, be­lieves that all the pres­sure will be on favourites Eng­land when they clash on Tues­day in their cru­cial Group B match of the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup.

The West In­dies cur­rent­ly sit third in Group B on four points be­hind lead­ers Eng­land and South Africa on six points, know­ing that any­thing oth­er than a vic­to­ry will see them elim­i­nat­ed from the tour­na­ment.

With on­ly the two top teams from each group ad­vanc­ing to the semi­fi­nal, the West In­dies has a slight­ly worse net run rate than Eng­land and a su­pe­ri­or one to South Africa, should all three teams end on six points.

Speak­ing in a pre-match press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day. Deitz said Eng­land was favoured to top the group and would be the ones feel­ing all the pres­sure.

“We’re re­al­ly ex­cit­ed for to­mor­row, and we’re go­ing to play the same way we did over the last two games. Ob­vi­ous­ly, Eng­land is a bit of a dif­fer­ent task to Scot­land and Bangladesh; they’re one of the best teams in the world, but we’re go­ing to have the same at­ti­tude,” Deitz said.

“I think all the pres­sure is prob­a­bly on Eng­land. They’re the favourites to go through, prob­a­bly the favourites from our pool from the very start, so there’s no pres­sure on us at all, which is great.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly we want to get in front ear­ly, put the pres­sure on them, and play with our flair and have some fun out there. We back our­selves and our skills to be able to get over the line,” he added.

Deitz said while the Windies’ open­ing round loss to South Africa was re­gret­table, he said he was hap­py with the way the team had re­spond­ed with two dom­i­nant wins over Scot­land and Bangladesh.

He said the com­mand­ing man­ner in which they won those two match­es had boost­ed their net run rate and put them in a po­si­tion that a win over Eng­land would see them ad­vance to the knock­out round.

“It’s been a great ex­pe­ri­ence for us, and ob­vi­ous­ly it would have been great to have won the first game, but it has put us in a po­si­tion where every game has been a grand fi­nal since then, and the girls to their cred­it have re­al­ly at­tacked the op­po­si­tion every time that they’ve played since,” Deitz said.

“It’s put us in a re­al­ly good po­si­tion as we go in­to our last game... [and] we’re now in a po­si­tion where our net run rate is pret­ty good.

“A win should get us over the line; I know there’re a lot of cal­cu­la­tions go­ing on, but if we go out there and win the game, we should be fine, and that’s what we’re go­ing to try and do,” he main­tained.

(CMC)