July 4 was a marvelous day for the West Indian team and fans. West Indies won the third and final T20I against Pakistan and won the series by 3-0. One of the most important factors resulting in this victory was Stafanie Taylor’s hat-trick in the last match at the Sir Viv Richards Cricket Ground in Antigua.
All-rounder Stafanie Taylor broke into the West Indies team in 2008, aged 17, and immediately made herself a key member of the team. Since then, she has played about 126 One-Day Internationals and 110 T20 Internationals. She took charge as the captain of the team in 2018 and has been producing incredible results since. West Indies experienced a lot of firsts with Stafanie Taylor, she was the first West Indian woman to get ICC Women’s Cricketer of the Year, she is also the first West Indian woman to score 1,000 runs in ODI. She was the first female cricketer to score a century and to take four wickets in an innings of an ODI.
Taylor was on fire throughout the third T20I. During the first inning, she took Aliya Riaz’s wicket in the 16th over and then went on to take the hat-trick in the last over. The hat-trick came on the second, third, and fourth ball of the over, resulting in the Pakistani all-out. She finished with the figures of 4/17 as Pakistani women set a target of 102 for the women in maroon.
Taylor then went on to score an unbeaten 43 from 41 balls and managed to sail West Indies past the target with five balls in hand. She was the highest run-getter for West Indies in the third match. Taylor’s heroics in the last match got West indies three wins in a row and the series trophy.
Taylor is the second female player after Anisa Mohammed to take a hat-trick for West Indies in international cricket. Anisa Mohammed took her hattrick against South Africa in 2018. Taylor took the wickets of Fatima Sana, Diana Baig, and Anam Amin in the last over.
West Indies won the first and second match by very small margins of 10 and 6 runs respectively. They managed to win the second match even after two of their teammates, Chinelle Henry and Chedean Nation, collapsed during the 2nd T20I.
