UAE women’s captain Humaira Tasneem has challenged her team-mates to take more responsibility with the bat if they want to beat Netherlands again and end their World Twenty20 Qualifier campaign on a high.
The UAE take on the hosts on Saturday in the 7/8th place play-off with both sides playing for pride after seeing their qualification hopes ended in the group stage.
Tasneem’s side come into the game on the back of a seven-wicket defeat to Thailand on Thursday in which they were bowled out for 50.
It was the third straight match that the UAE fared poorly with the bat after scores of 39 and 83 against Bangladesh and Papua New Guinea respectively.
But their six-wicket victory against the Netherlands a week ago where they chased 137 shows there’s strong talent in the batting department and Tasneem wants to see that kind of performance in their final game.
“I think in the last three games, our batting hasn’t been great,” said the spinner. “Not one of the batters has taken responsibility and I hope we do it on Saturday. Someone has to take responsibility and play our shots and stay there and at least scoring a run a ball. I hope that happens because we need to improve as a team as a batting unit.”
“The win against the Netherlands will give us a lot confidence because we chased a total in order to beat them. That was very important for us and we started the tournament by winning against them and that is how we want to end it.
“We will play against Netherlands in good spirit and want to try and win our last game here.”
The victory against the Dutch put them in a strong position of reaching the semi-finals. A win against either Papua New Guinea or Asian Twenty20 champions Bangladesh in the group would have sealed their spot in the last-four.
But they fell to a last-ball defeat to Papua New Guinea before coming up short against Bangladesh as their dream of reaching their first-ever World Twenty20 ended.
Ireland and Bangladesh, who will meet in Saturday’s final, will complete the line-up for November’s showpiece event in the West Indies. Tasneem admits things could have been different if they scored big totals.
“We are upset we didn’t reach the semis,” she said. “The game against PNG was really close. If we had won that we would have reached the semi-finals and keep the dream alive. T20 cricket is a format where anything can happen. We didn’t click as a batting unit and if that had happened things would have been different today.”
