BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – West Indies women’s head coach Sherwin Campbell said yesterday his side was upbeat ahead of the tour of South Africa, and were confident of dominating the Proteas on the upcoming two-week tour.
“I’m expecting the team to do very well. We’ve just come off the regional tournament and most of the girls are a part of this tour. We just had four days of camp and the team is looking forward to the tour,” the former West Indies vice-captain said during the squad’s final practice session.
“The girls are fairly confident. Obviously they are a couple of new faces in the side … and we are trying to get the team to gel together and for players to recognize each other and know each others games.”
West Indies will face the hosts in four One-Day Inter-nationals and three Twenty20 Internationals, beginning October 16th.
In recent encounters earlier this year, the regional side have gotten the better of South Africa, defeating them in the Women’s World Cup in Australia and the T20 World Cup in England.
Campbell, who led the squad on both those tours, said he was hoping to dominate the South Africans in their backyards this time around.
“We have four one-days and three Twenty20s and I’m looking to win every game on tour and that’s the aim. When you go on tour you want to win every game,” the former Windies opener stressed.
The 14-member side, which is being led by wicketkeeper Merissa Aguilleira, includes four new players who starred in the regional tournament in Guyana in August.
Britney Cooper, Tremayne Smartt and teenagers Amanda Samaroo and Shemaine Campbelle, have all been included and Campbell said he would be looking at them closely.
“A couple of girls that had done really well in the regional tournament, the selectors decided to give them a chance and have a look at them,” Campbell noted.
“Obviously there is a Twenty20 World Cup next year and we want to look at as many players as possible.”
He said while the fitness of the squad was not as high as he would like, he had used the recent four-day camp to work on these issues.
“It (camp) was only four days and we tried to get as many [things done] as we could in those four days,” Campbell explained.
“We worked on fitness [and] cricket skills [and] we basically tried to get the players pretty fit because I recognized that a couple of players who came to this camp were not as fit as they should be.”
Campbell, who played 52 Tests and 90 ODIs between 1994 and 2002, said he was expecting to see a big improvement from the team’s batters.
“Obviously you want to see some improvement from the players as well in terms of our batting because in recent tours the bowlers have been doing pretty well but the batters have not been getting the consistent scores as we would like,” he pointed out.
“We are looking forward to seeing the batters put together some useful scores.”
The squad will depart the Caribbean today and are scheduled to arrive in South Africa on Sunday.
SQUAD – Merissa Aguilleira (Captain), Anisa Mohammed, Shemaine Campbelle, Britney Cooper, Shanel Daley, Deandra Dottin, Cordel Jack, Stacy Ann King, Pamela Lavine, Chadean Nation, Amanda Samaroo, Tremayne Smartt, Shakera Selman, Stafanie Taylor.