BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – THE start of the ICC World Twenty20 women’s tournament is less than a month away and team Head Coach Sherwin Campbell has called on the people of St. Kitts-Nevis to give their full support to the West Indies for the event.
“Last year in St Kitts we beat England, and they are Number 1 in the world, so we are confident,” Campbell said. “Playing the preliminary matches in St Kitts will be to our advantage. Last year we got great support from the people and we will be expecting the fans to come out again.”
The team is scheduled to arrive in the Federation in the coming weeks and begin their training camp, at which they will play a series of One Day International and Twenty20 matches against Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
While the West Indies women showed a strong fielding effort last year in their domination of the number one ranked English team, Campbell said that he hopes their training camp, which bowls off on April 17 at the St. Pauls Recreational Ground, would build their cohesiveness in the field even further.
“Our fielding against England last year was excellent, but I still want to see more improvement in that area. In 20/20 the more runs you save, you give yourself a better chance of winning. In our team we have a good bowling unit. What we need to do is indentify the players for various situations and that is what we will be doing in the camp and in the warm-up matches.”
The West Indies team is currently ranked fifth in the world, but the women have shown great improvement in the past two years thanks to a dedicated focus toward “the ‘team’ concept”, Campbell said. Under the strong guidance of team Captain Merissa Aguilleira, the coach noted that players such as Stafanie Taylor, Deandra Dottin, Pamela Lavine, Cordel Jack and Stacy King have blossomed with both the ball and bat, particularly in the Twenty20 format.
“We expect to do very well. I find we are better at 20/20 cricket than we are at 50-over cricket, so we go into the ICC World T20 Tournament confident of doing well. The aim is to win. We are playing at home and every team dreams of winning at home. We enter the Tournament ranked at Number 5 so the first aim will be to get into the top 4 (semifinals) and move on from there,” he said.
Apart from winning the coveted ICC trophy, Campbell said that his team is focused on raising the region’s awareness of the women’s game and the great strides being made there, just as they did against England last year.
“I am happy the Tournament is being played in the West Indies. It will certainly show people that women’s cricket is a game to focus on and that the girls deserve respect. In the past women’s cricket was seen as a bit of a pastime, but not nowadays.
“It is growing and having been involved in women’s cricket for a few years now I have seen the rapid changes. The game is faster now, it’s full of energy and life, and players all across the world are very dynamic,” the coach said.
The first match of the women’s tournament will be held on May 5 at Warner Park beginning at 10 a.m., where West Indies will take on South Africa.
