St. Lu­cians cre­at­ed a record for the largest at­ten­dance at an ICC World Cup T20 women’s match at the pre­lim­i­nary stage when 11,000 fans packed in­to the Dar­ren Sam­my In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et ground for the fi­nal pre­lim­i­nary round match which in­volved the host Windies and Eng­land.

The Windies gave the noisy fans a gift via a vic­to­ry to spark off wild cel­e­bra­tions as Windies crick­et be­came alive un­der the Beause­jour sky. Checks with tour­na­ment of­fi­cials in­di­cat­ed that it was the largest for a women’s in­ter­na­tion­al in the Caribbean, and the biggest record­ed in a Women’s World Cup T20 Fi­nals match.

The cap­tains al­so had their say on the mag­nif­i­cent crowd sup­port dur­ing the game. South African cap­tain Dane Van Niek­erk said: “Tonight 10,000 peo­ple came out. I had goose­bumps that whole sec­ond in­nings when West In­dies were chas­ing, to see a coun­try com­ing to­geth­er and sup­port­ing the women, it’s just amaz­ing to see. It just shows you what the West In­dies team is do­ing at the mo­ment, unit­ing a lot of dif­fer­ent is­lands and get­ting every­body to­geth­er. I heard the game was sold out. Ob­vi­ous­ly, I was in shock be­cause I knew it was go­ing to be a great game be­tween two great teams. And to get in there and see the at­mos­phere, 10,000 peo­ple can rock out, but 10,000 re­al­ly ex­cit­ed fans that each and every per­son has rhythm, it's quite ex­cit­ing to see. And just the women's game de­serves a fan base like that. And I hope the whole world saw how much fun the fans had tonight, and all cred­it to two very good sides that put up a very good show for them."

Eng­land skip­per Heather Knight said: “I think it was a bril­liant at­mos­phere, 10,000 peo­ple, that’s huge. The sort of crowd, the sort of noise you want to play crick­et un­der as a pro­fes­sion­al crick­eter. Ob­vi­ous­ly, the sup­port was there for the West In­dies. And I think it's bril­liant that so many peo­ple have come out and sup­port, and it's made it sort of a car­ni­val at­mos­phere and a re­al­ly en­joy­able one. I think to ask any of the peo­ple that have come tonight, in terms of how much they've en­joyed them­selves. All the staff at our ho­tel have been ask­ing for tick­ets and say­ing they've re­al­ly en­joyed watch­ing the women play. Hope­ful­ly, it will be the same in An­tigua. Hope­ful­ly, the word will get around and there will be a few in hope for those two semis.”