West Indies female all-rounder, Shabika Gajnabi, is confident she will dominate if and when Cricket West Indies’ Women’s Super50 tournament plays.
The tournament was scheduled to be played this month but due to the Novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, it was postponed indefinitely.
“Yes,” she told Stabroek Sport when asked how sure she was of dominating the regional tournament.
She explained that she was putting in the necessary work to make it a reality.
“I’m still working from home,” the 19-year-old added, before detailing, “I’m working really hard on my fitness and sticking to the basics…I’m getting in some running and working on bodyweight workouts.”
The right-handed batter posited that the delay in the tournament provides her “with more time to think about the tournament and focus a bit more on what needs to be done.”
This is in addition to the “adequate” preparation she had benefited from prior. According to the Rose Hall Town Youth and Sports Club player, “Before the Inter-County tournament, we had some warm up matches in Berbice. I would say I had a good hit before the Inter-County and I came straight into the tournament with the same form.”
She then went on to become the first female player to score a double ton in the tournament, a feat she regards as… “one of the most memorable moments because it is my highest score.
“When I was going in to bat I said to my friend I scoring something big today and I never expected that I will make a double, I thought it going to be a ton or so but after the hundred I went on.”
The three-time national Under-19 female captain was optimistic of producing similar consistency for Guyana and pointed out that the regional tournament provides her with an opportunity to showcase her talent and use it as an audition to return to the side.
The all-rounder reckoned that she was not intimated by the talented players in the other countries but indicated that she is focused on stepping up to the challenge and improving her batting.
Gajnabi played five One Day Internationals and five T20 Internationals in 2019 but was left out of the Caribbean side’s World Cup squad. However, she told this reporter that the snub served as a motivation to work harder.
With that international exposure, she believed it benefits her since “It will help me a lot more to focus on the game [since] playing international cricket and seeing how international players play as well as being around them gave me a lot of knowledge and experience I can use to my advantage in the regional tournament.”
