KARACHI, Pak­istan – Cap­tain Hay­ley Matthews has praised the qual­i­ty of her side’s top or­der bat­ting af­ter West In­dies Women swept Pak­istan Women 3-0 in the One-Day In­ter­na­tion­al se­ries which wrapped up in Pak­istan on Tues­day.

The 26-year-old led her side’s dom­i­na­tion with the bat, plun­der­ing 325 runs at an av­er­age of 162.5 with three cen­turies, while vice-cap­tain She­maine Camp­belle av­er­aged 45 and for­mer cap­tain Stafanie Tay­lor, 40 – both notch­ing a half-cen­tu­ry.

“I think com­ing down here to Pak­istan, we def­i­nite­ly want­ed to be able to grab those six [ICC Cham­pi­onship] points so I think every­one is su­per hap­py with the re­sult and the way it went,” Matthews said.

“For sure, I am pleased with how the bat­ting went this se­ries, ob­vi­ous­ly my­self be­ing able to get some runs but the way She­maine Camp­belle was able to han­dle num­ber three and Stafanie ob­vi­ous­ly com­ing in at num­ber four and hav­ing a match-win­ning per­for­mance in the last game.

“So it was re­al­ly pleas­ing to see a lot of the bat­ters step up, es­pe­cial­ly com­ing from the top five.”

In a se­ries played ex­clu­sive­ly at Na­tion­al Bank Sta­di­um, West In­dies Women won the open­er by 113 runs af­ter gath­er­ing 269 for eight, cour­tesy of Matthews’s un­beat­en 140.

They cap­tured the sec­ond ODI by two wick­ets af­ter chas­ing down 224 with Camp­belle and Tay­lor get­ting fifties, be­fore win­ning the fi­nal game by 88 runs with Matthews lash­ing her sixth ODI hun­dred of 141.

How­ev­er, Matthews said she be­lieved her side’s bat­ting could get even bet­ter.

“I think we can still score more runs. I think we did re­al­ly good as a team to score 270-plus but if we can get some more big scores com­ing from around the group, we’ll be even bet­ter,” she con­tend­ed.

“And our top or­der es­pe­cial­ly bat­ted re­al­ly, re­al­ly well this se­ries – She­maine Camp­belle, Stafanie Tay­lor, both of them be­ing pret­ty con­sis­tent.

“And with the ball, there’s al­ways ar­eas you can im­prove. We would’ve prob­a­bly want­ed to keep Pak­istan to a bit less than that in the sec­ond ODI but I think over­all we’ve had a pret­ty good per­for­mance that I can’t com­plain too much about.”

Matthews, her side’s lead­ing bat­ter, said her form had been dri­ven by her de­sire to spend time at the crease.

“At the be­gin­ning of this se­ries I spoke about oc­cu­py­ing the crease and spend­ing a lot of time there and I felt like if I did that the runs would come and think so it hap­pened,” she said.

The Caribbean side will now turn their at­ten­tion to the five-match Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­al se­ries bowl­ing off Fri­day at the same venue, with Matthews hint­ing at changes.

“We ob­vi­ous­ly had the same team for the three ODIs but de­pend­ing on how the T20s go, we might be able to see some of the girls come in and get an op­por­tu­ni­ty, and that’s ob­vi­ous­ly what se­ries like these are about,” she said.

“So ob­vi­ous­ly now that we’re in­to the T20 games – and we have five of them – hope­ful­ly we can see some new girls come in and see them do­ing a bit with the ball and the bat as well and get­ting some ex­pe­ri­ence.”

CMC