Women’s team defiant despite horror show

Pacer Kainat satisfied with personal performance, says it was Pakistan’s best-ever tournament

KARACHI: Pakistan Women may have suffered the ignominy of being the worst team in the Women’s World Cup — finishing bottom after losing all seven games — but the players seem reluctant to take the blame upon themselves; choosing to rather deflect it upon everything else.

Fast-bowler Kainat Imtiaz insisted that the team put up a good performance but were just unlucky — seven times over — while also stating that it was the batsmen who let them down.

“We went close in all of our matches,” she said, despite several of the matches being heavy defeats. “Our batting collapsed too quickly and that is why we faced those defeats.”

Kainat also went on to express her satisfaction at her personal performance. “I took wickets at crucial moments of the game. I gave the team a breakthrough in every match I played,” she said. “Our bowlers did all the hard work and it was the batsmen who failed us.”

The stats don’t back Kainat’s claim though, as she only managed three wickets in the four matches that she played — giving away a whopping 196 runs in her 29 overs — to finish with one of the worst averages and economies in the tournament.

Seven losses in seven may seem as poor as it can get, but Kainat said this was Pakistan’s best-ever performance. “If you see the records, you will see that this was the team’s best performance since we had a few close matches,” she said. “Before this, no women’s team was able to come this close. This shows that we are improving.”

Kainat reiterated the need to improve the batting. “All the teams had done their homework against us, which showed that they didn’t take us lightly,” she said. “Now we just need to improve our batting and we can start winning matches.”

Meanwhile, Pakistani opener Ayesha Zafar — who scored just 108 runs in seven matches — said the tour was good for them since it helped them gain invaluable experience. “We gave it our best but still failed, so this tour has pointed out many of our weak areas on which we must work,” she said.

Ayesha, like Kainat, insisted most of the matches could have gone either ways. “We could have won the matches but unfortunately we couldn’t,” she said. “This has taught us a lot for next time though and we will surely improve. Our batting was unable to deliver but we had a lot of bad luck as well and missed some chances in the field.”