Heather Knight admits England are ‘fighting for our lives’ following second World Cup defeat
- Planet Sport writer
- 9 March 2022
England’s World Cup hopes are hanging by a thread following a second successive defeat in New Zealand.
The defending champions fell to a surprise seven-wicket loss against West Indies after failing to chase down 226 runs.
Shemaine Campbelle's 66 and Chedean Nation's unbeaten 49 helped steer the West Indies to 225 for six. While the target seemed reachable, England faltered and were all out for a mere 218 runs.
England skipper Heather Knight called on her side to shake off their disastrous start to the tournament saying: "We need to have a knockout mindset now.
"The next game is crucial. So we have to bring that mindset of needing to win every game and that simplifies things.
"And hopefully that will sharpen people up, sharpen people's minds to what we need to do.
"Because at the moment we're fighting for our lives in this tournament.
"There's a lot of experience in this group, we've lost games before and we know we can't dwell on defeats too much."
England will face South Africa in Tauranga on Monday, knowing full well improvements must come, and fast, to turn the current troubles on their head.
This is just wonderful skill by Dottin #CWC2022 pic.twitter.com/JlubCBRblO
— Brett Igoe (@brettruganalyst) March 9, 2022
"First and foremost, we can't linger on it too much," Knight added.
"We've made it tricky for ourselves, but there's no way are we out of this World Cup yet.
"So we have to focus on the next game, get what we can from this game, park it and move on to be ready for South Africa.
"We were clear on our plans - we just didn't quite execute, at times.
"They finished pretty strongly, and it's something we can do better with the last 10 overs.
"It's something we'll look at and keep improving, our back-end stuff."
