Taylor overcomes neck injury to take career-best 4 for 12

About 12 overs into the chase in St. Lucia, it seemed like a West Indies win was very unlikely. South Africa needed 57 runs in 48 balls, two of their most experienced batsmen were still on the field, and they had seven wickets in hand. That's when the captain Stafanie Taylor, overcoming a neck injury, decided to take matters into her own hands. She bowled the next over and engineered a dramatic collapse starting with the wicket of Sune Luus, and finished with career-best figures of 4 for 12 which eventually gave the defending champions a famous win.

"On the good side," Taylor said, "When we were getting hit, I told [Deandra] Dottin that I'm going to bowl and that drove me I told myself I'm going to take over this bowling and that got me the breakthrough."

Their batting didn't quite match their bowling though. West Indies endured a collapse of their own as South Africa's veteran fast bowler Shabnim Ismail ran through their line-up with 3 for 12, restricting them to 107 for 7 in 20 overs, which was only one run more than what they scored in their opening game against Bangladesh.

"Our batting is not best at the moment," she said. "We struggled to reach 107. In the middle with Natasha [McLean] and Kycia [Knight] batted well and we need that partnership and bowling performance topped it off.

"We've said that in team meeting, we've been working hard in the nets and our game. I believe it's all about application, we need to give ourselves some time to assess the wicket. I don't think we have given ourselves that time. We are goods batters, we can clear boundaries any time. We are not worried about boundaries, it's just our application that needs to get better."

South Africa captain Dane van Niekerk had a similar opinion about her batsmen, adding that she had no concerns about the bowling unit. South Africa had showed signs of struggle during their successful 100-run chase against Sri Lanka earlier this week as well, and in the game against West Indies, they lost nine wickets for 28 runs.

"Sometimes we find a way to make it difficult for ourselves," van Niekerk said. "With wickets in hand we saw the bulk of the runs being scored in the back-end on a wicket like this. Our plan was to bat steadily and look for a win in the 19th over types. But it was like panic stations there."

"We got ourselves into trouble quite early due to slow starts. A number of soft dismissals cost us. Don't think a lot of our batters can come out and say they got out to a great balls. We did a great job restricting them. But again, we panicked.

"If you want to win a World Cup, you need to convincingly chase down 107 and we didn't do that. We need to introspect as batsmen. Since our warm-ups our batting has struggled to get 100."

West Indies were also backed by some electrifying fielding on the day. Deandra Dottin was particularly spectacular, and it was her direct-hit to run out van Niekerk that opened the door to West Indies again.

"Deandra at backward point is fixed," Taylor said. "She's fantastic. Batters fear her. When she's going towards the ball nobody wants to take a run. When Dane got run out she was caught off guard and that turned out to in our favour."

A display like that usually revs up the home fans. "I think the crowd today was fantastic," Taylor said. I was really surprised to see that crowd when I look back at CPL, there wasn't that amount of people. And to see that amount of people that came out to watch our game, it's just fantastic. And the girls were loving it."