England secured top spot in Group B with a resounding 114-run victory against Pakistan at Newlands on Tuesday, reaching a mammoth 213 for five – the highest total in Women’s T20 World Cup history – before restricting Pakistan to 99 for nine.
Nat Sciver-Brunt – the tournament’s leading run-scorer – hit an unbeaten 81 from 40 balls, while Danni Wyatt (59 off 33) and Amy Jones (47 off 31) also shared in the onslaught.
South Africa’s 10-wicket win against Bangladesh in the second game of Tuesday’s double header means that England will face the tournament hosts in their semi-final on Friday. The other semi-final will be contested by Australia and India on Thursday.
“We’ve been building up to a performance like this,” Sciver-Brunt said. “We targeted this game as a chance to show everyone as a team what we’re about, and to show off a bit.”
Wyatt has suffered a frustratingly quiet tournament, with scores of 11, 16 and 0 before Tuesday’s game, but came out swinging: she smacked Sadia Iqbal’s fourth ball of the day through the covers, slogged the next over long on for six, and took a mere 29 balls to reach her half-century.
She miscued leg-spinner Tuba Hassan to long-off in the 12th over, while Heather Knight was caught in the deep seven balls later. But Jones then joined Sciver-Brunt in a 100-run partnership brought up off just 46 balls, as the pair deftly found the gaps, and twice cleared the boundary rope.
It was Sciver-Brunt who coined the term “Jonball” in a post-match press conference at the start of this World Cup; here she epitomised the philosophy (named after England head coach Jon Lewis), facing just three dot balls in her innings.
“It’s important for us to be pushing ourselves and pushing our standards higher and higher,” Sciver-Brunt said. “Everyone has bought into and believes that the way we’re playing will win us this tournament. If we can do this consistently, the world is ours.”
The Pakistan captain, Bismah Mahroof, who sustained a groin injury in their match against West Indies on Sunday, had to look on from the sidelines as her team crumbled without her guidance.
Pakistan looked clueless in the field, leaking runs and failing to appeal for a stumping against Jones in the 19th over despite the batter clearly being out of her ground. They also had five penalty runs awarded against them, when a throw-in hit a glove discarded by keeper Sidra Nawaz.
Jones was hit square on the chest in the 15th over by a Fatima Sana no-ball, but seemed largely unaffected. She followed up her innings with some neat glove work, snaffling two catches and stumping Pakistan’s stand-in captain Nida Dar, as they sunk to 33 for four within the opening nine overs of their chase.
Muneeba Ali, who a week ago became Pakistan’s first centurion in women’s T20 internationals, was one of Jones’s victims; while Katherine Sciver-Brunt (two for 14) picked up a couple of easy scalps to regain some pride, after her hammering at the hands of Richa Ghosh on Saturday.
Hassan managed a quickfire 28 from 20 balls at the back end, but was run out in the 19th over after a bizarrely half-hearted attempted to make her ground. A second stumping from Jones off the final ball of the match wrapped up one of the most one-sided World Cup matches you will ever see.
