Wellington (New Zealand), Mar 14 (IANS): West Indies women's team head coach Courtney Walsh said on Monday that a 40 per cent deduction of match fee due to slow over-rate would pinch any side hard, and his players were no different.
The International Cricket Council (ICC) had on Sunday fined the West Indies women's team 40 per cent of their match fee for maintaining a slow over-rate against India in their Cricket World Cup match at the Seddon Park on Saturday (March 12).
Asked about his thoughts on the slow over-rate and the 40 per cent match-fee deduction, the former West Indies pace bowler said that financially "we don't want that to happen", but with India piling on the runs one cannot be bowling easy deliveries.
India had thrashed the Stafanie Taylor-led West Indies by 155 runs, with the last edition's runners-up scoring a mammoth 317/8 and then restricting Walsh's side to 162 at Hamilton.
"Well, any team will say that financially we don't want that to happen. I know it's going to be difficult -- if a team scores 380 runs (India scored 317) against you and you got to be really cheap in the balls. It's going to slow things a little bit. We had a number (of) stoppages. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to go to the room to see; to check the logs and to find out exactly what went about.
"But now we're a couple of stoppages and stuff so I'm hoping that everything was put into place and they have checked with all the calculations. But you don't want the team to ever fine and get 40 per cent -- at no point in time. I think. If everything is put into perspective, when I looked at it, I figured we probably -- we were slow behind. But, I thought, we were probably about one over slow behind (sic)," said Walsh.
Walsh said he and his side have to accept the verdict and move on.
"But I wasn't paying close attention to the match officials who have a job to do with that. So we just have to accept it and look at it. And, as I said, because I wasn't able to speak directly with the persons who were involved... I don't know how they calculated on exactly what they did was the managing, and then once they're happy, then we just have to move on and ensure it doesn't happen again.
"We had injuries we had a lot of boundaries being hit. A lot of you know wicketkeepers being changed. It's going to slow down a little bit but I mean, once everything is put into perspective and the comments come into play, then we just have to accept what is there and hopefully, you know it doesn't happen again. But I don't like to place a fine whether it's opposition or my team -- because no one wants to sort of take anything from the players, especially in this financial crunch time," added Walsh.