West Indies women begin two week training camp

CAVE HILL, Barbados,  CMC- The West Indies women’s cricket team has begun a two-week training programme as part of preparations for an upcoming schedule that includes a home tri-nation series with highly-regarded women’s teams England and New Zealand.

A squad of 13, including Captain Merissa Aguilleira, top all-rounder Stafanie Taylor, off-spinner Anisa Mohammed and talismanic batter Deandra Dottin, started the training camp on Monday at the Sagicor West Indies High Performance Centre in Bridgetown.

“The purpose of this camp is to get the players together, since we have not done anything as a group after we returned from the ICC Women’s World Cup and the tour of Sri Lanka,” said Coach Sherwin Campbell.

“We wanted to get the players together, so we could do remedial work on their game and continue to set plans going forward from here about what we want to team to be able to do.”

Campbell said the camp was vital for the continued development of the Windies Women’s team and that he wanted to focus on some of the basic skills of the game.

He is being assisted by HPC coaches Graeme West, Andre Coley, and Roddy Estwick.

“We will be looking at all the basics, batting, bowling, and fielding. We need to examine each player’s game and work on the areas in which they need to improve,”said Campbell.

“Their improvement will not happen overnight because it’s a process, but they have to constantly work at their game for us to remain competitive at the international level, and we want to be able to emphasise this during the camp.”

The Windies Women’s team is now rated No.2 in One-day Internationals and No.4 in Twenty20 Internationals.

Campbell said he was looking forward to the Regional Women’s Super50 Tournament taking in place in August and the series involving England and New Zealand.

“They will tell us a lot about our players and about the direction in which we need to head going forward from here,” he said.