Frustrations boiled over on and off the field for England after they failed to make their first T20 World Cup semi-final in seven editions. The last time England missed out on the knockouts was in 2010, and their disappointment after a meticulously planned campaign, which included a two-week camp in Abu Dhabi and simulating being without their captain Heather Knight in a game, was on full display.
As West Indies began to hunt down a target of 142 by putting on the best powerplay score of the tournament, England dropped catches and their shoulders. Although this was their last match of the group phase, it was their only one in Dubai, where they encountered the ring of fire for the first time. They put down five catches, all of West Indies opener Qiana Joseph and she went on to score a decisive, match-winning half-century.
Asked whether England would have liked to have had a training session at the ground before match day, coach Jon Lewis said: "No one's had an opportunity to train here. We've been training in the ICC Academy down the road."
All ten teams have used the ICC Academy as a training base, apart from Scotland, who had a session in Sharjah early on, and India, ahead of their crunch clash against Australia. India's training took place after the match between New Zealand and Sri Lanka on Saturday and included a middle practice. When Lewis was asked if he knew about India's practice he said: "I didn't know they did that. I didn't know. India can pretty much do what they like, can't they? Is that how it works?"
An ICC spokesperson clarified to ESPNcricinfo that, "All other teams had the opportunity of training in Sharjah like India did on that day," and it is understood no other teams asked to use the facilities at Sharjah. New Zealand and West Indies will have a practice session there on Thursday, ahead of their semi-final on Friday.
England would have eyed that game as theirs, after they won their first three matches, with increasingly larger margins, but their net run-rate meant the West Indies clash was effectively a quarter-final. Lewis called it "pretty brutal" to bow out this way, particularly given the form England brought into the tournament.
"I'm pretty gutted, to be honest. We've worked incredibly hard over a long period of time working towards this point," he said. "We feel like we had a really good formula to come and play our best cricket out here and we haven't done that today. And it's really disappointing. You put a lot of time and effort and thought into the process of getting to this point, and then you put the players out on the field and you want the players to go and play their best cricket, because you know that at their best, this group of players is a really good cricket team."
Since the last T20 World Cup, where England were losing semi-finalists, they have won 21 of 28 matches, including the T20 component of the Ashes and an 11-match winning streak against New Zealand, Pakistan and Ireland. Of the teams at this World Cup, only Australia, with 17 victories from 22 matches, have a better win percentage over the same period. Given those numbers, it would not be exaggerating to say that England had realistic expectations of making it out of the group stage but did not deal well with being put under real pressure in the field for the first time in the tournament.
After Hayley Matthews took the fight to them with 14 runs off the first over, Joseph showed a willingness to take risks with a few big hits that ended up being half-chances. She edged her first four, then got a leading edge which fell safely, then was dropped on the boundary by Sophia Dunkley, then hit a ball just over backward point, and then top-edged a sweep which did not carry to short fine. In between that, Hayley Matthews spliced a pull shot off Charlie Dean that landed in front of Danielle Gibson. England's fielders were frantic and soon became too frazzled to hold on, even to easier opportunities. At point, Alice Capsey dropped Joseph when she skied one straight up and again at deep mid-wicket for what was a simple chance. It appeared that England's drops were the result of things happening in fast-forward but, as Lewis pointed out, they were not the only team whose hands let them down in Dubai. "It's obviously something that's been reasonably common at this stadium," he said.
According to ESPNcricinfo's ball-by-ball data, there have been 75 catches dropped in the 20 group-stage matches, which is the most in the last four tournaments. Of those, 39 have been put down in Dubai, and 33 of those in night matches. The numbers suggest that difficulty of catching under an unusually configured circle of lights is not mere mythology and perhaps more practice at the match venue would have helped. But there was more to England's defeat than just that set of circumstances.
They unravelled in other ways too. After the powerplay, Ecclestone and Bell both bowled tight overs but Maia Bouchier put Joseph down twice in two overs. At one point, she had her head in her hands and her team-mates' expressions gave away their disbelief. By this point, Lewis knew something was not quite right.
"It's not a reaction you want as a coach when you're on the sidelines. It seemed like maybe after six or seven overs we were starting to think, 'Oh crikey, we're up against it here,' and you could see a lot of the players just starting to drift off. Especially with our energy in the field and our tempo - we played a lot slower today."
Lewis went out himself at the drinks break to calm things down. "I rarely go on the field after a drinks interval, but I went on today just to remind them what we're all about as a cricket team," he said. "They responded to that really well after the drinks break. There was a period, yeah, for three or four overs where we looked a little deflated as a side because we took some punches and when you're on the ropes, you're taking punches, it can be hard to keep bouncing back. But I thought they did after the drinks interval, they came back, took some wickets, got back on our plans, and actually executed much better after that point."
By then, it was all but too late. Joseph brought up fifty in the over after the break and then Bouchier dropped her again before Danni Wyatt-Hodge finally held on to one. Bouchier did not join the celebratory huddle. England also removed Matthews and Deandra Dottin, who was bowled by the player who talked up the mini-battle between them, Sophie Ecclestone, but she was too annoyed to care about bragging rights. She'd spent some of the rest of the time muttering to herself in irritation as runs flowed and she could do little to stop it.
The other face like thunder was Knight's. She was not able to join the team on the field and offered advice from the sidelines but it was not the same as calling the shots in the middle, which is something she values doing. "The reason you've seen emotion from Heather is that she's really committed and really cares about England cricket and not being out there would have been incredibly frustrating for her," Lewis said.
England have gone from a team who had the knockouts in their sights to taking the early flight home, with the knowledge that they simply "weren't at our best today."
"The reality is we didn't play well enough today and we got beaten by a better side on the day. That's sport and that's World Cup sport and it's a knockout game," Lewis said. "We knew that coming into the game, so, we'll dig into that and we'll work out why that is, and we'll try and move the team forward from there."
England's next assignment is a tour to South Africa starting next month.