‘Absolutely not what we wanted’ – Esther Corder

The United Arab Emirates, Uganda, Thailand and the Netherlands, the hosts for the ongoing ICC Women’s World T20 Qualifier 2018, are out of the running.

Of them, UAE perhaps have the most reason to feel gutted. They started the tournament well, riding on a 59-ball 69 to upstage Sterre Kalis and the Netherlands. That gave them hope, enough for Nisha Ali to say, “I’m sure there are many more wins ahead.”

There weren’t any. The final league game against Bangladesh, the ninth-best team in the world, was always going to be a tough one, so Papua New Guinea had to be beaten. But a batting collapse meant PNG set up a chase of just 84 and got there with one ball and two wickets to spare.

That, coupled with PNG’s subsequent win over the Netherlands and UAE’s loss to Bangladesh meant their dream was over. For now, at least.

“We’re really disappointed, to be frank, because the last match that we played was also a close one. It’s really hard, but it’s not the end. I’m sure we have a long way to go,” said Roopa Nagaraj, the UAE player.

In the game against Bangladesh, all UAE managed to put up was 39, Fahima Khatun’s 4/8, including a hat-trick, dashing their hopes. “I think we didn’t click as a batting unit, where it mattered, our batters didn’t click,” lamented Nagaraj.

Uganda were the other team that exited the tournament despite a win, earned over Thailand, who ended the tournament without a point to their name.

In their final game, against Ireland, Uganda batted first and put up 78/8, which really wasn’t enough to test the Irish women.

Francis Otieno, the Uganda coach, however, held out hope, saying. “It was a hard game. We didn’t bat well, we didn’t get as much as we wanted on the board to be able to bowl to. But we all plan if we can grow from this, and build on this going forward as a team.”

The most disappointed were perhaps the Dutch, who were the home side, playing in familiar conditions and with star batter Kalis on their side. Kalis started brilliantly, playing the innings of the tournament so far when she hit 88* in just 68 balls against UAE.

The Netherlands still lost the match, and then they lost to Bangladesh, and finally to PNG.

“I think we are all really disappointed about the result. We really went into the (PNG) game wanting to win. We are gutted with the result, and it was absolutely not what we wanted,” said Esther Corder, the Netherlands medium pacer who had a poor tournament, going wicketless and scoring no runs in two outings.

The tournament isn’t quite over for any of these teams. They still have the playoffs to worry about: The Netherlands v Uganda and Thailand v UAE. But the dream of playing in the World T20 will have to wait a while.