ICC Ladies’s T20 World Cup: Ashleigh Gardner says Australia have to be cautious of West Indies captain Hayley Matthews’ firepower in semi-final

Ashleigh Gardner says Australia have to be cautious of a harmful West Indies facet containing Hayley Matthews and Deandra Dottin as they put together for the primary ICC Ladies’s T20 World Cup semi-final at The Oval on Tuesday, reside on Sky Sports activities.

Six-time champions Australia are the favourites to progress to Sunday’s ultimate after they topped Group 1, profitable all 5 of their matches, whereas West Indies’ path to the final 4 was rather less easy.

They practically missed out on a berth within the semi-finals after struggling a shock six-wicket defeat to Eire, which opened up an opportunity for New Zealand to qualify. Finally, West Indies had been handed a lifeline by England’s Danni Wyatt-Hodge, who produced an unimaginable batting efficiency within the ultimate Group 2 match to knock the White Ferns out of the match and ship Matthews’ facet via.

Australia and West Indies are acquainted opponents, with vice-captain Gardner’s facet having claimed T20I and ODI collection sweeps towards Matthews’ staff in March and April, earlier than they confronted off in a warm-up match main into the match.

Gardner is aware of the harmful energy Matthews and Dottin possess with the bat, even when each gamers have struggled to attain runs up to now through the match.

“West Indies are a completely different threat [to India]. They’ve got a lot of class and a lot of firepower within their team,” Gardner mentioned.

“Additionally they have a number of expertise, clearly led brilliantly by Matthews, who’s a participant that may take away a sport fairly rapidly. However then you definately take a look at somebody like Dottin, she’s a risk in all three phases of the sport.

“She’s a fantastic player. I’ve had the privilege of playing with her, and seeing how she goes about her cricket, she’s so fearless in the way that she approaches it, which sometimes can be quite scary because she can flip a switch pretty quickly.”

Matthews produced a rating of 48 off 37 deliveries to assist her facet defeat defending champions New Zealand by seven wickets within the opening sport of the match.

It was her highest rating up to now on the World Cup, with the West Indies skipper following that with scores of 14, 17, 14 and 22 in her subsequent 4 matches.

Dottin has additionally struggled with the bat. Her highest rating through the match, 21, got here within the defeat to Eire, with Dottin having made 72 runs throughout 5 innings through the match.

Regardless of that, Matthews is aware of her facet’s huge names want to face up in the event that they need to repeat their feats of 2016, when West Indies beat Australia within the ultimate to be topped T20 world champions.

“We’re going to need big performances from big players. I think we’re certainly going to need a standout individual performance,” Matthews mentioned.

“But I think to beat a team like Australia, you still need more than one player, and we’re going to have to have our best players really stepping up to the plate.

“I really feel like gamers like Aaliyah Alleyne, Jahzara Claxton, they have been nice function gamers all through the match. And I feel with our stars alongside gamers like them actually enjoying large roles, we’ll should put collectively an all-round sport as a bunch.

“We haven’t had our best match yet. We haven’t had the likes of myself or Deandra Dottin in the runs really. And that leaves a lot of room for improvement for us as a team. So hopefully we can see some of us stepping up a bit more and taking it to the Aussies.”

Matthews has a fairly prolific scoring file towards Australia within the T20I format. She has scored probably the most runs (507) towards Australia of any opposition participant within the T20I format, notably giving Australia nightmares in Sydney in 2023, when she struck her highest particular person T20 rating of 132 runs off 64 deliveries, serving to her facet overcome a 213-run chase.

Ellyse Perry additionally featured within the 2016 World Cup ultimate towards West Indies, throughout which Matthews produced a player-of-the-match efficiency, placing 66 runs of 45 balls, whereas Dottin additionally notably took figures of 2-33.

The Australian all-rounder is keen to concentrate on what lies forward, as a substitute of revisiting the heartache of 2016.

“We don’t want that kind of bad juju,” Perry mentioned. “I mean, what’s that, 10 years ago? The game has changed so much in that period of time. And I just think you cannot even pull things from the last match because it’s crazy how sport works.

“We have performed one another quite a bit within the final couple of months. We really had a tour to West Indies earlier this 12 months. We have performed one another in a warm-up match, so we’re kind of fairly conversant in one another in the intervening time.

“They’ve got some tremendously talented and dangerous players with a lot of experience. So it will be a great challenge for us. It’s a quick turnaround too at a different venue, so I think we’re really looking forward to it.”

Watch Australia tackle West Indies reside on Sky Sports activities and FREE through the Sky Sports activities app from 2pm on Tuesday.

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Watch each ball of the Ladies’s T20 World Cup solely reside on Sky Sports activities and NOW via to the ultimate at Lord’s on July 5.