'Feels like we have lost' - England's Kate Cross after close victory against New Zealand

England’s Kate Cross, who had an excellent outing with the ball against New Zealand, has said that the team is not happy despite a victory in the Women’s World Cup 2022. In a must-win encounter, England managed to scrape through the line by just one wicket to keep their hopes alive in the tournament with only their second win in five games.

Cross was the pick of the bowlers as she gave away just 35 runs and picked three wickets to ensure that the white ferns did not post a big total. However, it all came down to requiring eight runs with just one wicket in hand in the 46th over, and Anya Shrubsole, much known for her bowling, bailed the defending champions out of trouble.

There’s quite a lot of negative chatter: Kate Cross

Cross mentioned that at the end of the day, it was about winning the game but she wasn’t quite convinced with the performance of her side. She added the victory still feels like a loss as England were cruising to victory at 176/4 but lost five wickets for just 20 runs after that. She felt that the negativity that has been building around the possibility of England’s early exit in the Women’s World Cup has not helped their cause.

“It’s just about finding ways of winning and we found a way to win today, and we’ll go away we’ll review our batting honestly and we’ll review our bowling honestly like we do with every game. I think it feels like we’ve lost, it feels a little bit like there’s quite a lot of negative chatter around which obviously is not the case, we’ve just won a must-win game of cricket against New Zealand on their home soil at Eden Park with the biggest crowd that we’ve played in front of,” Cross was quoted by ICC.

Cross reckoned that the positive side of the game has been two points and she is quite confident that England will peak at the right time. England will face Pakistan and Bangladesh in their remaining two games which are relatively easy fixtures.

“To come away with two points is still massive and we shouldn’t be too disheartened either because we did half of that game very, very well and tournament cricket is all about peaking at the right time. So, as long as we can keep going and keep making improvements, which I feel like we have since the first couple of games, then hopefully we can get ourselves into that knockout stage,” she added.