CHELMS­FORD – West In­dies skip­per Hay­ley Matthews has surged to a ca­reer-best-equalling sec­ond place in the ICC Women’s T20I Bat­ting Rank­ings fol­low­ing a stel­lar per­for­mance against Eng­land.

Matthews, crowned Play­er of the Se­ries, dom­i­nat­ed the three-match con­test with 177 runs, high­light­ed by an un­beat­en cen­tu­ry in the open­ing game at Can­ter­bury in Eng­land.

Her ex­ploits pro­pelled her past In­dia’s Sm­ri­ti Mand­hana and Aus­tralia’s Tahlia Mc­Grath, re­claim­ing the No. 2 spot, a po­si­tion she last held in De­cem­ber 2023.

Matthews now sits on 765 rat­ing points, that is 29 points be­hind the num­ber one ranked T20 bat­ter, Beth Mooney of Aus­tralia.

Com­pa­tri­ot De­an­dra Dot­tin, who missed the Eng­land se­ries, fell nine places in the rat­ings to sit in 20th po­si­tion with 609 points.

Open­er Quina Joseph fell 11 places to be in 40th po­si­tion on 492 points.

Fol­low­ing the T20 se­ries against Eng­land, Matthews cred­its her pre-se­ries prepa­ra­tions for her suc­cess and ul­ti­mate as­cent in the ICC rank­ings.

“I think just hav­ing some firm plans and play­ing to my strengths at all times has helped me a lot. I feel like I’ve been for­tu­nate enough to get to play a lot of T20 crick­et around the world and gain a lot of ex­pe­ri­ence. I’ve learned a lot more about my game and just put my plans in­to prac­tice. Thank­ful­ly, since I’ve been here, I’ve been able to ex­e­cute pret­ty well.”

Matthews and her West In­dies team will now turn their at­ten­tion to the One Day In­ter­na­tion­al se­ries against Eng­land, start­ing with the first of three match­es at Der­by on Fri­day.

CMC