West Indies Women lead selector, Ann Brown-John, believes there is a “slight advantage” England women have over the Caribbean unit as the five-match T20I series continues.
West Indies Women are currently looking to keep the series alive, facing a 2-0 deficit and plays their third match today at 13.00 hours.
Speaking on the Mason and Guest radio programme earlier this week, Brown-John noted that preparation leading up to the tournament has been one of the key factors that can contribute to their performance so far.
“Coming into the tournament we expected it was going to be a tough tournament for a number of reasons, one, because of the COVID situation we were not able to have a lot of cricket in the Caribbean, as a matter of fact the girls have not played cricket in six months,” she said. “Although most of them were able to do strength and conditioning work in their countries, not all of the countries were able to do skill work because like Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana some of these countries have been on lockdown because of the number of COVID cases so much of the girls have not had as much of the skill work as they would have liked,” she added.
Brown-John justified her position on England’s advantage, by pointing out that the extensive preparation they had on the buildup of the series.
“I know they are at a slight disadvantage because of the fact that England were able to have I think two camps before coming into the series with us because England were ultimately preparing for South Africa who were unable to come and another camp to prepare for us so they would have had the benefit of two camps,” she said.
Brown-John indicated that through discussions with the coaches, the team is not yet where they would like but will continue to build on where they are as the series progress.
She said, “Speaking with the coaches there were a few things that have been identified, with the three weeks preparation that we had we were not sure we would be at the stage we would like to be at the first game but we were building into it and we would continue building into as the matches go.”
