104 for 0, and Somehow Three Runs Short: The Jamaica Empress Lose a Game They Had Already Won

There is a particular silence that falls over a cricket ground when a chase that everybody has stopped watching suddenly becomes a chase again. Kensington Oval found it somewhere around the sixteenth over, and by the twentieth it had turned into the kind of noise that Barbados keeps in reserve for occasions it did not expect to have.

The Jamaica Empress Women needed 141. They were 104 for 0 after twelve and a bit overs. Meg Lanning was in, set, and batting the way Meg Lanning bats when the arithmetic has already been done. Thirty-seven were needed from forty-two deliveries. On any reasonable reading of a Twenty20 match, that is not a chase; that is a formality with a scoreboard attached.

They lost by three runs. Four wickets for thirty-three in the last seven overs, and a side that had not lost a wicket all innings could not find the boundary when the boundary was the only thing that mattered.

The Tridents were put in and immediately looked like a team that wished they had not been. Qiana Joseph went for 14, Kiran Navgire for 8, and the innings that had raced to 31 inside four overs was 56 for 4 in the tenth. Harleen Deol — signed only this week for the remainder of the tournament, and thrown straight into the middle order — made 2 from 8 and will want the next one back.

Stafanie Taylor was the reason. Four overs, 29 runs, four wickets: the sort of spell where a captain takes the ball because nobody else is going to, and then finds that the pitch is holding just enough to make driving a bad idea. Nonkululeko Mlaba's four overs cost sixteen. Through ten overs the Empress had the game in a vice.

What rescued Barbados was a partnership between two players who have spent their careers not panicking. Maddy Green made 39 from 36. Suzie Bates made 39 not out from 28. Together they added 78 for the fifth wicket, and the shape of it mattered more than the size — they took singles for eight overs, refused to hit into the field, and then took twenty-odd off the last two. From 56 for 4 the Tridents reached 134 for 4 before Green finally holed out in the twentieth over.

140 for 7. On that surface it was a par score dressed up as a poor one, and the Empress spent thirteen overs proving the first half of that sentence wrong before spending seven proving it right.

Slowly, and then all at once, and mostly by forgetting that a run rate below six still has to be scored by somebody.

Hunter went first, caught for 47 with the score on 104 — a wicket that ought to have been an irrelevance and instead turned out to be the hinge. Rashada Williams came in and made 4 from 10, which in a chase needing barely a run a ball is a quietly fatal contribution. The Empress were 115 for 2 by the sixteenth.

Then Lanning went for 57 at 118 in the eighteenth, and with her went the last person in the side who had the measure of the pitch. Chinelle Henry made 7 from 6. Stafanie Taylor, who had taken four wickets an hour earlier, was left stranded on 8 not out from 7 balls at the wrong end of an over she never got to finish properly.

The Tridents, to their considerable credit, did the two things a fielding side must do in that situation: they did not bowl a bad ball to a new batter, and they did not concede a single boundary in the last two overs. Afy Fletcher and Suzie Bates bowled their full allocations for 23 and 18. Qiana Joseph — who had opened the batting — came back and took a wicket for 24. Four different bowlers took one wicket each, which is usually the signature of a defence built on pressure rather than on one spell of brilliance.

Nineteen required off the last over. The Empress managed fifteen. Three runs, and a partnership of 104 that will be remembered for how it ended rather than for what it was.

For Barbados, a win at home that they had no business getting, and confirmation that Bates and Green are the pair to bat around when the top order goes. Hayley Matthews got 21 and will be the first to say the captain needs more than that.

For Jamaica, a defeat that will take some sleeping off. Lanning and Hunter did everything asked of an opening pair in a low chase; the four batters who followed them faced 30 balls between them and made 23. Stafanie Taylor's 4 for 29 deserved a great deal better than a not-out 8.

The Tridents Women are back at Kensington tonight against the Guyana Amazon Warriors Women, who beat Trinbago by 25 earlier in the day. On this evidence, nobody at this tournament should be trusted with a chase until they have actually finished one.