Two Nights, Two Kensington Thrillers, and This Time Barbados Are on the Wrong End

Kensington Oval has staged two Women's CPL matches in two days and both have gone to the last two overs. On Saturday the Barbados Tridents defended 140 against a Jamaica side that had been 104 without loss. On Sunday they made eighteen more and lost, which is roughly how this tournament has gone for them.

Tazmin Brits is the reason. Her 46 came from 41 balls and contained nothing that would make a highlights package — five fours, one six, and a complete absence of panic across three separate partnerships. That is the innings that wins a chase of 159 on a used Kensington surface.

Hayley Matthews made exactly 50 from 37 balls with four sixes, and for twelve overs Barbados looked like a side heading for 180. Her second-wicket stand with Kiran Navgire was worth 63 from 42, and when Navgire and Maddy Green added 36 more from twenty balls Barbados were 123 for 3 in the sixteenth over.

They lost two wickets in consecutive deliveries, and the final four overs produced only 35. SS Grimmond's 3 for 28 and Erin Burns' 2 for 19 from three overs are the figures that stopped it: between them they bowled seven overs and took five wickets.

Suzie Bates' unbeaten 22 from 11, arriving at 123 for 4, was the reason 158 happened at all. Shabnim Ismail's four overs went wicketless for 27, which on a night when three other bowlers took wickets says more about the batters' respect than her lack of reward.

Guyana's chase was a study in never letting the required rate climb. E Brathwaite hit three sixes in a 15-ball 22 to take the opening stand to 47 in 5.3 overs. Brits then added 34 with Erin Burns and 30 with Shemaine Campbelle, and the required rate did not climb above eight and a half until the seventeenth over.

Brits was stumped for 46 at 111 for 3 in the fifteenth over — the moment Barbados needed to convert into two more quick wickets. Instead Campbelle and Nadine de Klerk added 25 in 22 balls, Campbelle made 36 from 28, and when Campbelle went at 152 for 5 with the nineteenth over already under way, only seven were needed. RMAU Grimmond hit the first ball she faced for six, and it was over with a ball to spare.

Afy Fletcher was the pick of the Tridents' bowlers with 2 for 23, and Hayley Matthews' four overs for 22 were as good as anything bowled in the match. The problem was at the other end: CS Fraser's three overs cost 46, and in a defence of 159 that is an entire over's worth of margin gone.

Kensington in the second week of the WCPL is a surface holding up well — 317 runs came in 39 overs, both innings scored at better than seven and a half, and the ball came on consistently under lights. There was no real dew factor, which makes Guyana's decision to field a reading of the chase rather than the conditions. Sixteen sixes in the match suggest the boundaries were reachable for anyone willing to commit.

This fixture did not carry a CricIntel preview. What we wrote about Barbados after Saturday's three-run win over Jamaica still stands, though, and with the sign reversed: that was a match they won from a position they should have lost, and this was one they lost from a position they should have won. A side that is 123 for 3 after sixteen overs at Kensington and finishes on 158 has left twenty runs in the middle, and twenty runs was the margin in both directions across two nights.

The WCPL table could hardly be tighter: Trinbago Knight Riders Women and Guyana Amazon Warriors Women both on four points from three, Barbados Tridents Women and Jamaica Empress Women both on two. Every side has won at least once and lost at least once.

Barbados have now played three and lost two, both of them from winning positions, and the pattern is consistent enough to be a plan rather than bad luck: their top four score freely and their last four overs with the bat do not. Hayley Matthews cannot bat at Nos. 2 and 7.