Jenny Gunn returns with her second blog from inside England Women's camp, as the team qualify for the semi-finals at the World Twenty20 in Bangladesh.
Our first match in this Women’s World Twenty20 didn't go to plan. West Indies posted 133 for seven batting first but should have probably got a few more runs to be honest. Stafanie Taylor was the rock of their innings with 56.
We were on track in the chase until Deandra Dottin, who has been known to cause havoc with the bat, produced a fine bowling spell to snaffle four quick wickets for just 12 runs which really pegged us back. We struggled from that position, and ended up falling nine runs short, which meant that we lost our opening match of the tournament – not ideal!
Still, there was no time to dwell on it – the matches come and go so quickly – it was literally play, train, play, train etc for all our group games.
Next up was India and we were looking to get things back on track with a strong win.
Lottie lost the toss (again!) so we found ourselves in the field (again!), but Anya got us going nicely with a couple of quick wickets. We managed to take regular wickets at one end, but at the other there was the constant presence of Mithali Raj, who ended with 57. India closed on 95 for nine which we we're happy with, but knew that we had a tough job to bat under lights to get the runs.
Sarah Taylor and Lydia Greenway got us into a strong position in the chase, and as a team we decided to try and get the runs as quickly as possible to help increase our net run rate. Doing so however meant that we lost a couple of wickets, which meant that I got a go at the crease when we hit the winning runs to win by five wickets.
Walking off the pitch happy and content having just recorded our first win, my mood quickly shifted when I found out that Anya (Shrubsole) and myself had been randomly selected for drugs testing. Bearing in mind we didn't finish our match till 10.15pm, hanging around at the ground for testing wasn't ideal.
We had to wait for the Indian girls to finish their testing before we could get ours over with, and by the time we were through the team bus had long gone. This was when our media manger, Beth Wild, decided that it would be best for us to wait at the ground for 10 minutes so Anya could do an interview with Sky Sports News.
Well the evening got a little worse from this point, as none of Beth's (three!) phones would work, which meant that we missed the interview anyway. So it was 00.10 when we finally got in our team car to head back to the hotel, only for our police escort to break down. Oh, and it was Beth’s birthday – what a way to spend it!
The next morning we found out that the hotel staff had made a cake for Beth, to present to her when we all got back to the hotel. Well, because she didn’t arrive back with the team, the girls decided that the easiest thing would be to pretend that it was Amy Jones’ birthday instead! By the pictures it looks like she loved all the attention!
Our third match against Bangladesh was a great game for both batters and bowlers. Lottie set the way with 80 and Heather Knight gave the innings some momentum at the end with a quick fire 18 off 9 balls to help us up to 137 for five.
Bangladesh didn't go anywhere quickly in reply thanks to some fine bowling by Danni Hazell, who took three wickets for just four runs. Nat Sciver backed her up with 3-10 to restrict them to 58 for nine.
This all set up a must win game against Sri Lanka, with whoever won the game almost certain to secure a semi-final spot.
Away from the cricket we had been really lucky so far in terms of sickness within the camp, but this was until Beth decided to go man down - on the big game day as well!
Back to the important stuff, and Sri Lanka won the toss and chose to bat first. Anya once again got an early breakthrough in the first over. Her spell of four overs cost only nine runs and taking three wickets got us in a great position of needing only 85 to win.
Sarah and Lottie went off like a train, hitting the bowlers to all parts, but a bowling change that saw some very slow spin from both ends resulted in both of them being dismissed.
The wicket started to turn quite a lot but Heather and Nat provided a sense of calm to take us over the line and book our place in the semi-finals.
We head back to Dhaka now and we are all looking forward to a change in scenery after spending over a week in Sylhet.