DUBAI – West In­dies Women’s skip­per Hay­ley Matthews says the team has as­sessed its mis­takes in the open­ing loss to South Africa and will look to im­prove on those ar­eas when then take on Scot­land Sun­day (Oc­to­ber 6) in their sec­ond match of the Women’s ICC T20 World Cup in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates.

The Caribbean side went down to the Pro­teas by 10 wick­ets on Fri­day in a huge­ly dis­ap­point­ing per­for­mance.

Matthews ac­knowl­edged that the West In­dies failed in both the bat­ting and bowl­ing de­part­ments in that con­test and re­vealed that the team had spo­ken about it in de­tail.

“We had some thor­ough dis­cus­sions yes­ter­day evening af­ter the match and ob­vi­ous­ly, it’s one of those games that you want to be able to put it be­hind you, so we try to have those dis­cus­sions as ear­ly as pos­si­ble,” Matthews told re­porters in a pre-match press con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day.

“We all knew we didn’t get enough runs on the board and kind of just tried to break down why that was.

“Then in the bowl­ing de­part­ment, ob­vi­ous­ly not get­ting to take wick­ets as well, but we had thor­ough dis­cus­sions about how we could build bet­ter part­ner­ships and al­so find ways to in­crease our strike rate,” she added.

Matthews said it was im­por­tant for bat­ters to be able to in­crease the scor­ing rate dur­ing the in­nings if the West In­dies were to post for­mi­da­ble to­tals at the World Cup.

“At some point in the game we felt like we got to a pe­ri­od in the game af­ter los­ing ear­ly wick­ets where Stafanie Tay­lor and She­maine Camp­belle were able to re­build re­al­ly well, but we weren’t able to kick in­to that sec­ond gear to get a big­ger score,” she said.

Matthews, who on­ly scored 10 in that open­ing game, said she was al­so hop­ing for a big score against Scot­land to help give her some mo­men­tum.

“I feel like I want to score every time I go out on the pitch…and I would love to have a good go against Scot­land and take that form in­to the rest of match­es,” she said.

How­ev­er, the West In­dies may be with­out the ser­vices of vet­er­an Stafanie Tay­lor, who has not ful­ly re­cov­ered from an ap­par­ent leg in­jury she sus­tained against South Africa.

In giv­ing an up­date, Matthews said Tay­lor was still be­ing looked af­ter by the med­ical staff and did not train with the squad on Sat­ur­day.

“They’re tak­ing good care of her at the mo­ment. Not sure how fit she will be for to­mor­row, might be on the field or might not be,” she said.

On a more pos­i­tive note, Matthew said Zai­da James, who was hit in the face, should be ful­ly re­cov­ered to go against Scot­land.

“Zai­da is talk­ing a lot bet­ter to­day. Last night she was mum­bling a few words, but I think she will be al­right. She’s a tough girl,” she said.

CMC