Dreams
Grade: C
There has been way too much cricket in England recently, keeping me up late at night with all its absurd antics. An 11:30pm local starting time for this first semi-final therefore seemed beyond my tiring peepers.
And yet… I did it. Or at least I think I did. Because a lot of what I believed I saw on my pillow-resting iPhone felt like mad dream logic:
Hayley Matthews hitting her first ball for four, Zak Crawley style
Footage of Deandra Dottin being carried back to the dressing room after the national anthems
Qiana Joseph slogging wildly at everything and not making contact
Georgia Voll dropping a simple outfield catch so that Joseph could continue her fruitless innings
Phoebe Litchfield responding to a montage of Australia’s dropped catches from the previous match by demonstrating how she wouldn’t drop any this time around
Sophie Molineux not taking a wicket in her first over
Sophie Molineux taking a wicket on the first ball of her second over
Ash Gardner taking 2/13 from four overs
A recovered Dottin entering the innings at number eight and looking like comfortably the best West Indies batter
Ellyse Perry facing an over where she struggled to pierce the field then wandering off, retired hurt
A threatened mankad from Aaliyah Alleyne
Beth Mooney trying to hit the winning runs from a free hit from a no ball because Alleyne tried to bowl from behind the stumps and kicked them over in the process
Ash Gardner actually hitting the winning runs with seven overs to spare
Okay. Yes. Maybe some of that isn’t all that dreamlike. Some of it was, in fact, downright inevitable. That being the case, let’s say that’s what happened and head to the final.