Australia women 182 for 2 (Healy 61, Lanning 58*) beat West Indies women 180 (Knight 40, Schutt 3-24) by eight wickets
The final ODI of the three-match series between West Indies women and Australia women in Antigua played out in the much same way as the previous two games, with a dominant Australian performance sweeping aside the hosts, this time by eight wickets. Megan Schutt made history, becoming the first Australian to take an ODI hat-trick in women’s cricket, before opener Alyssa Healy‘s blitz decisively shut West Indies out of the match. The 3-0 result helped Australia women surge past England women on the ICC Women’s Championship table, and open up a four-point lead.
West Indies opted to bat, but their innings was defined by the batting slumps that usually followed promising partnerships. Kyshona Knight anchored the top order with a knock of 40, helping the side rebuild after the early loss of opener Reniece Boyce. But once she fell, West Indies lurched from 73 for 2 to 104 for 6 in the middle overs. A 64-run seventh-wicket partnership between Chinelle Henry and Sheneta Grimmond lifted them past 150 but only to lose their last four wickets in 12 runs. That slump included Schutt’s last-over hat-trick, where she claimed the wickets of Henry, Karishma Ramharack and Afy Fletcher. Schutt, incidentally, was also the first Australia bowler to claim a women’s T20I hat-trick.
Healy, coming into the match with scores of 122 and 58 in her last two innings, played another match-defining knock, smacking 11 fours and a six in a 32-ball 61. By the time she fell in the eighth over, Australia were scoring at nine an over and the experienced Meg Lanning and Ellyse Perry then took charge of the chase and saw the side through with more than 18 overs to spare. Lanning, who had scored 121 in the first ODI, compiled an unbeaten 58 off 70 balls while Perry contributed 33 in their unbroken stand of 85.
This was only the third time in 16 years that West Indies women failed to win a single match in a home ODI series: they had been swept 6-0 by Sri Lanka in 2003 and lost a three-match series 2-0 to England in 2013 when one game was washed out. It also followed a 3-0 loss they suffered on the tour of England in June, and the two whitewashes have kept them at the seventh place on the ODI Championship table.