By Bob Fromer
Wednesday 12 July -- Fans of the GB Women’s Fastpitch Team will have been pinching themselves over the last two nail-biting days, 
revelling in those tense 2-0 upset wins over World #9 Australia and World #3 Chinese Taipei at the Women’s World Cup Group A in Ireland. But is “upset” really the right word?
After the win over Australia on Tuesday, GB centre fielder Kendyl Scott, whose home run in the fourth inning had broken a scoreless tie and set GB on their way, declared, “We're not the underdogs -- we're one of the best countries in the world!"
What’s certainly clear is that GB’s current world ranking – 16th – because it is based not just on the Senior Women’s Team’s recent results, but the results from all our age group teams, plus our failure to enter any tournaments at all when international softball competition resumed in 2021 due to Covid restrictions that were applied to the UK.
This is a team that finished third in European Women’s Championships in 2017 and 2019, then second in 2022, and in 2019 got to the final of the Olympic Qualifier for Tokyo. Given that Germany, France, Israel, and Spain – all teams we have beaten easily in the past few years -- are ranked ahead of us, the rankings are clearly nonsense. Italy and the Czech Republic are ranked sixth and seventh in the world, but we beat Italy last year (for the first time ever in an official senior competition) and have beaten the Czechs in almost all the meaningful games we have played against them since 2015.
So what is GB’s real world ranking? That’s hard to say, but it’s a lot closer to those of Australia and even Chinese Taipei than most of the commentariat at World Cup Group A had had realised. GB’s wins over the past two days may really have been a case of one top-ten team in world softball having two good days and beating two others.
Making your luck
There’s no question that GB was the better team on Tuesday in beating Australia, a team that’s not nearly the world power it used to be.
But the GB Women rode their luck a bit today against Chinese Taipei, and the result might easily have been different.
Details of the game are on the BSF website here, but things might have had a very different feel if Feng-Chen Lin’s double in the bottom of the first inning had bounced off the fence in right centre field rather than over it, in which case Yi-Ting Yang would have scored and Taipei would have taken a 1-0 lead.
Taipei are a scrappy team with speed and good contact skills, and they put GB under pressure, to a greater or lesser extent, in every inning but the seventh. In those situations, little things can make the difference, and had Chia-Wen Shen’s scorched line drive been a couple of feet to one side instead of straight at GB third base player Morgan Salmon, a run for Taipei would almost certainly have resulted.
But then, as the cliché goes, good teams make their luck, and GB were very good against Chinese Taipei.
GB pitcher Georgina Corrick was immense -- back-to-back shutouts against Australia and Chinese Taipei speak for themselves -- and she made some important adjustments as the game went on to negate Taipei’s approach. Georgina recorded 10 strikeouts in the game – three more than USA pitchers were able to induce when they played Taipei on Tuesday – but six of them came in the last three innings, and as a result, Taipei was able to exert less pressure rather than more in the final innings.
With the exception of one error in this game that could have been costly but wasn’t, the GB defense has done everything asked of it over the past two days and hasn’t ever looking like panicking, even when things have been tough.
Morgan Salmon has been a rock at third base. On Tuesday, against Australia, she had a bunch of fairly routine plays to make and made them all flawlessly. Today, against Chinese Taipei, she made two outstanding plays, both in the bottom of the fourth inning. The first was a backhand grab of a ball heading down the left field line that she turned into a 5-3 out; the second was snaring a very hard-hit line drive and turning it into a double play.
But if there was a game-saving play, it was probably left fielder Tia Warsop getting her glove to a pop fly in short left field just before it hit the turf. The bases were loaded for Chinese Taipei at the time and two were out, so the runners were moving: had Tia not made the catch, it would certainly have been two runs and maybe three.
But it’s not just the players who win games like these. The GB coaching staff, led by Tara Henry, has made sure this team is better prepared for the opponents we’re facing than any GB Team has ever been before, and that intelligence has helped both the defense and offense to perform at a higher level.
What now?
Coming into this Women’s World Cup Group A tournament, most observers would have ranked the teams in this order: USA, Chinese Taipei, Australia, Great Britain, Ireland and Botswana. Had everything gone to form, USA and Chinese Taipei would have occupied the first two spots in the round-robin standings at the end of the week and also in Saturday’s Page Playoff, which means they would play each other. The winner would qualify for the Women’s World Cup Finals next year in Italy, while the loser would get a second chance to qualify by beating the winner of the 3 v 4 game between Australia and Great Britain.
But while all other results over the first two days have gone according to that supposed form book, GB has completely upset the applecart, and now has an excellent chance to be the team in second place at the end of the round-robin. To finish in first place, they will have to beat the USA on Friday, and this young GB Team might not be quite up to that yet.
However, in a tournament like this, nothing can be taken for granted, and tomorrow (Thursday), GB can cement the position they’ve earned by beating Ireland when the two teams meet at 6.30 pm. The Irish will be supported by a partisan crowd at the windy all-weather field in Balbriggan, and the Irish will see a win against GB as their best chance to sneak into the Page Playoff.
Ireland defeated Botswana 7-0 on Tuesday, with pitcher Kailey O’Connor pitching a five-inning shutout and giving up only one hit.
Today, it was the turn of the Irish to only get one hit off Kaia Parnaby in seven innings in their loss to Australia, but holding Australia to a 4-0 scoreline suggests that Ireland can be hard to beat. The GB Women will need to be at their best again to notch their third win in a row.
Results
Scores on Wednesday in the WBSC Women's World Cup Group A were:
Great Britain 2, Chinese Taipei 0
Australia 4, Ireland 0
USA 15, Botswana 0
Chinese Taipei 11, Ireland 1
The round-robin standings after two days of play are:
Great Britain (2-0)
USA (2-0)
Australia (1-1)
Chinese Taipei (1-2)
Ireland (1-2)
Botswana (0-2)