Photo Credit: ICC
Stand-in captain Amy Satterthwaite described New Zealand’s one-wicket loss to England as “gut-wrenching” after it put them on the brink of being knocked out of their home ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2022.
Satterthwaite took over the reins from usual skipper Sophie Devine after she injured her back while batting and was unable to field before Satterthwaite’s wife Lea Tahuhu pulled up with a hamstring injury.
In their absence, Frankie Mackay stepped up and took career-best figures of four for 34 to pull England back into a tight contest when chasing a sub-par 204 after New Zealand had suffered their own batting collapse, losing eight for 69.
Nat Sciver’s 61 from 108 balls proved crucial as No.11 Anya Shrubsole went on to hit the winning runs to earn another last-gasp victory for defending champions England that kept their own World Cup hopes alive.
Satterthwaite said: “It is never a nice position to be in when you’re relying on other results and I think coming into today, we felt like we still had it in our control.
“It’s pretty gut-wrenching to get that close and not quite get over the line and feel like you’re standing on the edge of the cliff, borderline out of the competition.”
With Tahuhu and Devine off the field, Brooke Halliday was called on to bowl, taking her maiden international wicket to dismiss Amy Jones before Sophia Dunkley’s departure sparked a collapse of five wickets for 20 runs.
Despite moving just one wicket away from a famous win, the White Ferns could not get over the line and Satterthwaite cited the loss of two key players and their lower order batting as key issues.
She added: “The frustrating part is I really felt that we turned a corner against India in the series before this tournament as a group and we started to put some consistent totals on the board around that sort of 260/270 [mark] and everyone was playing their role superbly.
“We’ve obviously had some things not go our way today with the likes of Sophie’s injury, we’ve obviously lost Lauren Down coming into this tournament.
“But I still back the people that were in this line-up to produce bigger scores than what we have been and I think sometimes we possibly get a little bit ahead of ourselves and think we need more than we do.
“We need to use a bit of guts and determination to take it a little bit deeper to be able to get that score on the board.
“I thought Maddy [Green] and myself had absorbed a little bit [of pressure] today and were just starting to turn a corner and gain a little bit of momentum and my wicket was really poor timing in that sense, and unfortunately after that it was a little bit of dominoes.”
For Kate Cross, who was England’s best bowler with figures of three for 35, another close game has left her side feeling deflated despite prevailing in a must-win encounter after almost letting a simple run chase slip from their grasp at Eden Park.
She said: “It’s just about finding ways of winning and we found a way to win today, and we’ll go away we’ll review our batting honestly and we’ll review our bowling honestly like we do with every game.
“I think it feels like we’ve lost, it feels a little bit like there’s quite a lot of negative chatter around which obviously is not the case, we’ve just won a must-win game of cricket against New Zealand on their home soil at Eden Park with the biggest crowd that we’ve played in front of.
“To come away with two points is still massive and we shouldn’t be too disheartened either because we did half of that game very, very well and tournament cricket is all about peaking at the right time.
“So, as long as we can keep going and keep making improvements, which I feel like we have since the first couple of games, then hopefully we can get ourselves into that knockout stage.”
