The West Indies captain, Hayley Matthews, criticised the “unfair” distribution of funding in global cricket after her team were beaten resoundingly by Australia in the T20 World Cup semi-finals.
Australia chased down their 126‑run target with eight wickets and seven overs to spare, after a 63-run partnership off 36 balls between Beth Mooney and Ash Gardner enabled Australia to win at a canter. The six‑time champions will face the winner of Thursday’s semi-final between England and South Africa in the final on Sunday. After another convincing performance, they will surely be huge favourites to take home a seventh title. West Indies, by contrast, have failed to win a single tournament in the past decade.
Matthews said: “The reason we were so successful back in 2012 to 2016 is because women’s cricket was based off pure talent at that time. The minute that investment comes into the picture, we’ve seen the gap widen a lot.
“Our girls have to fight a lot to even be competing and to be playing at this level.
It makes it really hard for us to compete when we don’t have pathway programmes in place and then teams like Australia are pushing out Phoebe Litchfields from 15 years old every single year. I feel like it’s a bit unfair sometimes.”
The entire West Indies women’s regional season for 2025-26 consisted of 18 T20s and nine one-day games played over two weeks in January – incomparable to the riches of the Women’s National Cricket League and Women’s Big Bash League in Australia. But vast differences in broadcast revenue mean it is difficult for the West Indies Cricket Board to replicate the investment by Cricket Australia.
“You need a lot of money to do a lot of these things,” Matthews said. “Within the West Indies, we don’t always have the funds required. We are competing against teams like Australia who, realistically based on systems and opportunities, we’re not supposed to beat them, but we still come here and show up and we put out some magical performances sometimes.”
Sadly, the performance at the Oval on Tuesday was short on magic, after a collapse of four wickets for 12 runs in 17 balls put paid to any hope of West Indies setting a competitive total, despite an aggressive partnership of 42 off 27 balls between Deandra Dottin and Jannillea Glasgow at the end.
For Australia, the only alarm came when Ellyse Perry retired hurt in the seventh over of the chase with a quad concern. Mooney, though, said the move had been merely precautionary and that Australia’s leading tournament run-scorer would be fit for the final.
The day had begun in dramatic fashion when Dottin collapsed midway through the Australian anthem with what Matthews described as a “medical emergency” and had to be carried off the pitch by two of her teammates. She was listed to bat at No 5 but emerged from the dressing room only halfway through the innings when the scale of the collapse became apparent.
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Finally, she entered the fray at No 8 in the 16th over. Four boundaries followed, with Glasgow providing impetus at the other end – but by then it was too late for Dottin to make enough of a difference.
“She showed a lot of heart and fight,” Matthews said. “If you know Deandra, you know that her leg literally has to be falling off for her not to come out and bat. It was about catching herself, getting her head in fully, and then she wanted to be out there as soon as possible.”
Matthews had talked a good talk on the eve of the semi-final, saying her side could play “fearless” cricket in a match they were never expected to win. But a 35-run powerplay and an innings that contained 55 dots rather belied that rhetoric.
Matthews played the shot of the day off the very first ball, driving Lucy Hamilton through the covers, but the responsibility of carrying the batting seemed to weigh heavily on her shoulders and the runs gradually began to dry up. In the ninth over she frantically moved across her stumps to try to release the pressure valve by sweeping Georgia Wareham, made a mess of it, and was bowled.
Gardner then had Stafanie Taylor and Jahzara Claxton caught off leading edges in the 11th over, and the stuffing fell out of the West Indies innings.