Taylor now fourth in ICC rankings
Published:Thursday | October 14, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Potchefstroom, South Africa:
West Indies all-rounder Stafanie Taylor has made a big jump up the International Cricket Council's one-day international women's rankings for batters.
The right-hander, who opens the batting and also bowls off spin, moved from 10th spot to fourth following her outstanding performances in the ICC Women's Challenge in Potchefstroom, South Africa.
Taylor, the most successful player in West Indies women's history, has also moved to third in the ODI Women's Player Rankings for allrounders and into the top 20 of bowlers for the first time - in 16th position. These are all career-high rankings for the 19-year-old Jamaican.
Leading all-rounder
Taylor was the leading all-rounder in the tournament with 390 runs in five innings at an average of 97.50 per innings. She was the only century-maker - scoring a career-best 147 against The Netherlands - as well as three half-centuries.
During the tournament, she became the youngest woman in the history of world cricket to reach 1,000 international runs, and also the first West Indian woman to reach the landmark.
She also collected six wickets at an average of 14.83 during the event and won three Player-of-the-Match awards in the five matches.
"It feels great to be making such significant strides in the world rankings and I am pleased with my performances ... but there is still plenty of work to be done. I want to be the number one and I want to stay there, so I will be looking for runs and more runs in the upcoming matches," she said yesterday.
"I set myself several targets before I came here to South Africa and I managed to achieve most of them. I just want to keep growing as a player. The coach has asked me to bat and bat and bat and I have been taking his advice."
Taylor added: "My bowling has improved a lot and I really enjoy bowling. I prefer to use the 'newish' ball early in the innings as that works well with my kind of bowling. I'm not a big spinner of the ball, I prefer to get the ball to slide on to the batters."