Head Coach of the Guyana Senior Women’s team, Bharat Mangru, believes the team has a mixture of youthful and experienced players as they hunt their maiden Cricket West Indies Regional 50-overs and T20 Blaze titles.
Speaking exclusively to Stabroek Sport at the Enmore Community Centre Ground, East Coast, one of the four venues to host the tournament which gets underway Sunday, the Level Three coach stated: “It is a squad mixed with youth and experience.”
He said there were two U-19 players added to the squad and indicated he was anticipating that the bowling department be guided by Tremayne Smartt and Erva Giddings, both of whom have donned the West Indies uniform.
Mangru said the experienced players in the side are Captain Shemaine Campbelle, a regular in the West Indies side as well as Sheneta Grimmond and Shabika Gajnabi who have been involved in quite a few West Indies training camps.
He said they form the core of the team’s strength, stating that from his position, the team is decently balanced to compete in the tournament.
He brushed off the performance last season, explaining that he has set a realistic goal of finishing within the top three with winning the title being paramount.
The former national blind cricket coach suggested that the familiarity among the teams and the knowledge of their weaknesses is what his side will be looking to capitalize on with smart and tactical cricket.
He said the fact that Guyana will be hosting the tournament after a successful staging of the International Cricket Council’s Women’s World T20 should work in his team’s favour.
“I think it will benefit Guyana with the matches hosted here because the wicket is a bit slower than what the players regionally are accustomed to probably with the exception of Trinidad and Tobago and we have some decent spinners in our camp who can exploit those situations and some medium pacers who do a bit with the ball on those surfaces,” he said.
Mangru said that the team was expected to play a practice match but the weather has affected that plan. The players however, used the opportunity to do a bit of ground fielding and fitness drills to assess where they were in terms of match readiness.
