One Hundred and Nineteen Was Enough: Shabnim Ismail and the Warriors Bowl Trinbago Out of the Chase at Kensington

There is a kind of Twenty20 match that the format's marketing department would rather you did not watch, and there is a kind of cricket lover for whom it is the best thing available. This was both. Two hundred and thirteen runs across forty overs, nineteen wickets, and a contest that was genuinely alive until the sixteenth over of the chase.

The Guyana Amazon Warriors Women made 119 for 8 and looked like a side that had been comprehensively out-bowled. They then defended it by 25 runs, which means they had not been out-bowled at all — they had simply been bowling second on a surface that was getting worse by the over.

Shikha Pandey's four overs cost nine runs. Read that again — four overs, nine runs, two wickets, in a Twenty20 innings. That is an economy rate of 2.25 and it is the single most remarkable line on the card. Marizanne Kapp took 2 for 20, Deandra Dottin 2 for 26, and between the three of them the Knight Riders' senior bowlers never let the Warriors build anything.

Shemaine Campbelle's 31 from 28 was the innings that kept it respectable — she and Erin Burns added 42 in 36 balls for the fifth wicket, and that partnership is the difference between 119 and about 85. Tazmin Brits, Realeanna Grimmond and Burns all got starts and none of them got past 17. Chloe Tryon, Nadine de Klerk and Shabnim Ismail contributed five runs between them from fourteen deliveries.

The Warriors walked off having been bowled at very well and knowing it. What they did not know yet was that they had enough.

Trinbago lost Laura Harris for nought in the first over and Yastika Bhatia for six shortly after. Dottin and Kapp — the two players you would build a chase of 120 around — made 13 and 1. By the time Madeline Penna arrived and played the best innings of the match for either side, 28 from 22 with three fours and a six, the required rate was already awkward and the wickets column was already fatal.

Shamilia Connell's figures tell the story of the middle overs: four overs, one maiden, twelve runs, two wickets. A maiden in a Twenty20 chase of 120 is not a statistic, it is a verdict. Sheneta Grimmond took 2 for 19, Ashmini Munisar 1 for 21, and nobody in the Warriors attack went for more than 5.25 an over.

Trinbago's last six wickets fell for 41. They did not so much lose the chase as get talked out of it.

Kensington was slow and two-paced, which it has been for much of this WCPL — the 3rd Match here on September 10 produced a first innings of 100 for 8. Anything short sat up; anything full and straight was difficult to get away. Only three sixes were hit in the entire match, which at this ground, in this competition, is its own kind of data point.

The toss winner elected to field, and on balance that was the right call and it still lost. Defending 119 on a surface like this is more plausible than the number suggests, because the pitch was worse in the second innings than the first and both captains knew it.

Ismail is 37 years old and she is still, on the evidence of four overs at Kensington Oval, one of the fastest bowlers in women's cricket. Three for 21, and the wickets came at the moments that mattered — she took the top off the chase and then came back at the death when Trinbago still had a theoretical route.

There is something worth sitting with in the fact that she made 2 from 8 balls with the bat in a total of 119 and it did not matter in the slightest. She has spent fifteen years being the bowler whose spell decides the match, and on a day when her batters gave her the smallest total she is likely to defend all tournament, she did it again.

This match didn't have a CricIntel preview — we'll have full analysis for the next encounter.

The result tightens the WCPL table considerably. The Knight Riders remain top on four points from three matches but have now lost their unbeaten record; the Warriors move to two points from two with a net run rate of +0.513, level on points with the Jamaica Empress Women. With only a handful of league matches left before the playoff, net run rate is going to decide at least one place — and a 25-run win defending 119 is worth a good deal more to that column than a comfortable chase would have been.

For Trinbago, the question is the top order. Bhatia, Harris, Dottin and Kapp made 20 between them from 32 balls. That is not a bad day; four times in a row, it becomes a pattern.