Head coach of the West Indies women’s side, Courtney Walsh, has indicated that there will be changes in the batting order with the return of senior players and the exploits of the up-and-coming talents.
Walsh made these comments during a press conference yesterday where he welcomed the return of captain, Stafanie Taylor and seasoned wicketkeeper/batter, Shemaine Campbelle.
“We are very happy to have her [Campbelle] back. She had an unfortunate so to speak but it is great to have her back out and playing. She came to the camp to be assessed and tested to see if she was okay to start playing cricket and she passed it all in flying colours,” Walsh said.
He added, “We would be trying to come up with the best combination to get us up and running and give us the best chance of winning matches…the more games we win the better our chance of getting through the qualifiers.”
The former fast bowler pointed out that with the seniors now back in the set up, he is optimistic that players would not see it as they are out of the side but focus on competing for places so that they can be playing the best combinations at all times.
“A good point. Stafanie was not in the team and returning I don’t want people to sit back and say okay she is the captain, she is back so I wouldn’t play, you want people to be competing and that is a one of the good reasons to have someone like a Campbelle coming back into the set-up who was out injured as well and performed well in the camp, credible to have around, very experienced…so you want people still vying for spots,” he stated.
“What we are hoping for is the players who got a chance to realize that if they work hard enough, they can get in and not just want to be around…We have a lot more options now with someone like a Rashada [Williams] who played well coming in and opening the batting and giving us something to look at and the batting order is definitely something to look at because there will be changes, people have put their hands up and they will be competing for spaces… We have good depth I think which we saw over the last few series.”
With the squad arriving in Pakistan for the three 50-over matches ahead of the World Cup qualifiers, Walsh said he is looking to give everyone a chance to have match practice.
“We want to give everybody a chance to play here once that is possible so that we don’t go to the qualifiers with anybody being short of match practice if ever called upon so it is a matter of getting everybody’s feet wet so to speak before we get into that competitiveness where we play every other day so it’s going to be very testing and taxing on the body.
The head coach expressed confidence in this series serving its purpose to have the team fine-tune their preparations. “I’m pretty confident we can [do well] but this will be a good sort of pre qualifiers international game to play so we are pretty confident once we play the type of cricket we can play and the players perform to their standard that we expect then we should be okay but we are not going to take anything for granted.”
