Knight upbeat despite opening defeat
Heather Knight called on her “emotional” England team to hold their heads high after a disappointing defeat by India in their opening match of the Women’s Cricket World Cup.
The visitors took advantage of some errant England bowling in Derby on Saturday to post a daunting total of 281 for three. Despite a determined knock by Knight, the hosts fell 35 runs short.
Knight however, was keen to turn attention to tomorrow’s game against Pakistan and even used the unlikely success of their men’s team in the Champions Trophy as an example of how rocky starts can be retrieved.
The England captain said: “We fought really hard to get back into the game and were chasing uphill after the start we had with the ball.
“We are in general quite an emotional team but I think it’s really important that we keep our heads up.
“Seeing the girls, I think we’ll take the positives from today and look to Tuesday.”
She added: “It’s not the ideal start and how we wanted to do it, but there’s a lot of cricket in this tournament and hopefully we can build momentum later in the competition.”
Knight won the toss and put India in, but it was not a mistake in the vein of Ricky Ponting at Edgbaston in 2005, or Nasser Hussain at Brisbane in 2002.
With generous cloud cover, her logic was sound: that the ball would move laterally first up, something to which the Indian players are not accustomed back home. Frontline bowlers Katherine Brunt and Anya Shrubsole failed to find their range however, straying a little short as Smriti Mandhana and Poonam Raut put on a first-wicket partnership of 144.
The host nation never quite recovered, and now face six more group-stages matches to try and qualify for the semi-finals. England are trying to win their third home World Cup after 1973 and 1993 triumphs. With healthy crowds and widespread television coverage, this is the most visible Women’s World Cup yet.