(CWI) – The West Indies Women took an unassailable 2-0 lead in the three-match T20 International series when they defeated Ireland Women by 8 wickets at the Daren Sammy Cricket Ground on Thursday night.

Winning the toss and batting first, Ireland posted 113/7 in their 20 overs. Amy Hunter led the scoring with 33 from 35 deliveries, skipper Laura Delany was next best with 20. Cherry-Ann Fraser led the West Indies bowlers, finishing with figures of 4-0-16-1 and Hayley Matthews 4-0-24-1, with special mention to Ashmini Munisar who had the most economical spell of 4-0-14-0.

Hayley Matthews once again led the run-chase, bringing up her eighth T20I half-century before being dismissed on exactly 50 off 39 deliveries. Shabika Gajnabi played a supporting role to Matthews and eventually Chinelle Henry who smashed a full toss for six and three boundaries to finish on 22 off 12 while Gajnabi was not out on 17, as the West Indies Women reached the 114-run target in 16.4 overs.

Speaking after the match, skipper Hayley Matthews said, “I think we’re pretty happy with the result. Coming into this tour we wanted to be able to take home both series, so just very happy that we were able to go out there and win convincingly today and secure the T20I series. We had more intent going out today and we noticed early on that the wicket was a bit better on today and we went out with the intent to chase down the runs quicker. What really helped us today was the fielding, the catches and run outs we were able to take, kudos to the overall team for the bowling performance they put on and the fielders for backing them up.”

The teams will meet on Saturday July 8th for the final T20I. First ball is at 5:00pm local time (4:00pm Jamaica time).

Match tickets are available online from the Windies Tickets service, presented by Mastercard – Tickets.windiescricket.com – at a discount price of US$6/EC$16 (USS3/EC$7.50 children and seniors) with tickets available on the day at the box office at a price of US$7.50/EC$20 (US$3.75/EC$10 for children and seniors).

For fans unable to get to the games in St. Lucia, the CG United ODI Series will be exclusively live on RUSH Sports in the Caribbean and on BT Sport in the UK & Ireland. The matches will also be shown around the world on FanCode (India), ESPN+ (USA), Sky NZ (NZ), SuperSport (sub-Saharan Africa) and in all other countries on the Windies Cricket YouTube channel.