Hamilton, (Samajweekly) After helping Pakistan to a comfortable eight-wicket victory over West Indies in the Women’s World Cup, match-winner all-rounder Nida Dar named her country’s former batter Shahid Afridi as her favourite player.
“My favourite player is Shahid Afridi, then Shaheen Shah [Afridi], so I always celebrate like them,” the player of the match said.
Nida claimed four for 10, the best-ever figures by a Pakistan bowler at a World Cup, to run through the West Indies batting line-up in Hamilton and restrict them to 89 for seven in a game shortened to 20 overs per side due to rain.
An accomplished chase led by Muneeba Ali’s 37 ensured Pakistan ended their 18-match World Cup-winless streak and left Nida understandably satisfied.
Captain Bismah Maroof, the sole survivor from Pakistan’s most recent World Cup victory in 2009, was fittingly at the crease when the winning runs were hit and urged her side to build on a momentous day.
“We wanted that win badly,” she said. “We have done well but we haven’t crossed the line — we have talked in the group about how badly we needed a win but we have made mistakes at key moments.
“It was a great effort by the girls — credit to everyone. Now we are looking ahead and we will try and take this momentum forwards.”
West Indies skipper Stafanie Taylor was left to rue another below-par batting display which has dented her side’s semi-final ambitions.
“We were looking at 125, that’s what Hayley [Matthews] and [Deandra] Dottin were talking about,” she said.
“Once I got in, I realised 110/115 would have been a good target but somehow we couldn’t get there. When you look at the way we played against Bangladesh, the spinners choked us a bit and we couldn’t rotate the strike. The same thing happened today. All we had to do was rotate the strike and know that we could go big to get ourselves going but we couldn’t turn over the strike,” she added.
