West Indies all-rounder, Hayley Matthews, has issued a call for more regional women’s cricket as a means of boosting development.
The 22-year-old Barbadian explained on the Mason and Guest radio programme on Tuesday night, “I think we need more regional cricket. We haven’t had much over the years, [and] when we do have our regional cricket in the year it is usually about two [or] three weeks of a tournament.”
Matthews added, “We try to squeeze a 50-over tournament and a T20 tournament into that two, three weeks to a month, and obviously that is not adequate for us to be growing as cricketers.”
The all-rounder, who is ranked fourth in the T20 format, believes that this system does not give the younger players enough opportunity to have adequate exposure and therefore they are unable to improve sufficiently.
“It means that there is no system for young girls to come through really because you are not playing enough cricket against each other and I just think that is one area we could improve on to see some growth within the region,” she stated.
When asked about the prospects of having a lower level tournament implemented across the region in order to give the players more matches, Matthews admitted she could not speak for every territory but revealed that in Barbados, the females have a team that participates in the second division tournaments.
She noted, “Maybe it is something that CWI can look at, influencing the different country boards to get a senior and lower divisions and helping the girls to get more cricket and play competitively.”
Currently, in Guyana, there is no hardball female cricket being played in Essequibo and Demerara while Berbice usually fashions a few female tournaments annually.
Since the Women’s World T20 was hosted in the Caribbean back in 2018, the Guyana Cricket Board hosts an under-17 female franchise tournament to complement its calendar of under-19 and senior female tournaments.
