Windies Women building momentum heading into WC Qualifiers

Shakera Selman believes building a winning momentum heading into the World Cup Qualifiers will be vital.
Shakera Selman believes building a winning momentum heading into the World Cup Qualifiers will be vital.

West Indies women are keen on building momentum with next year’s World Cup at the forefront of their plans.

This was revealed by pacer, Shakera Selman yesterday ahead of the third Women’s One Day International (ODI) against Pakistan today.

Selman said, “It is very important,” when asked about their successful campaigns in recent times.

“Especially as we build towards the World Cup qualifiers. Our focus right now is that World Cup Qualifiers then obviously the World Cup in New Zealand next year. We’ve spoken at length as a team of how important it is to get back to winning ways, about remembering how to win games,” she added.

West Indies are on the verge of a series win, leading 2-0 heading into the third game of the five-match series.

“We are very confident, we expect the Pakistanis to come back really hard to come back into the series but after that convincing victory that we had in the second ODI, we are very confident as a team,” Selman disclosed.

The 31-year-old said that part of their success was their ability to have different players stand out at various phases of the game and not be dependent solely on Stafanie Taylor, Hayley Matthews and Deandra Dottin.

Among those namedropped were Kyshona Knight, who batted through the entire innings in the second ODI and spinner, Anisa Mohammed, for her four-wicket haul in the same match.

Nevertheless, Selman says that there are still areas of their game that the Caribbean unit would be looking to improve on as they continue their campaign.

“There are always things we are looking to improve on, we are looking to play a lot better against their spinners, we noticed one of their spinners was able to bowl 10 overs for 13 runs against us and she was also fairly economical in the first ODI so we are looking to counter her a bit better, I think we’ve done a lot better against the left-arm spinners they have thrown at us, we’ve done a lot better as a team with the ball, but we are also looking to improve at the top in terms of taking early wickets,” she reasoned.