Cricket West Indies have appointed Hayley Matthews as the new captain of the women’s team and the Barbados all-rounder is eager to perform in her new role.
According to Matthews, “it is definitely an exhilarating feeling, I’m humbled and honored to be given the opportunity to go there and lead the West Indies as a side and I’m just really looking forward to working alongside Stafanie and the other player is continuing the progress that’s been made over the last couple of years.”
She added, “As a kid, you know, you want to be a cricketer. A lot of the time you dream about being the captain of your country or your region, I definitely think is the pinnacle of what you can achieve for your country or region. And I just think I really want to go there and represent the team while I represent the people of West Indies well.”
Matthews reckoned that over the last couple of years it has been quite challenging for the side but the time has allowed growth.
“I’m learning so much within the group or within the team and I think even in this position now I’m definitely looking forward to the learning that can take place for me over the next couple of years as well.”
The all-rounder noted that captaining her national side, Barbados has helped her hone in on her leadership skills.
Lead selector, for Cricket West Indies’ Women’s Cricket, Ann Browne-John detailed the rationale behind the decision to appoint Matthews as the new captain.
“The panel has had a review we have looked at the entire team and where we are and where we would like to go and during that review we have looked at the leadership which is a discussion we have had for some time now. When we look at succession planning, and you know how we are looking at the team going in the future. Stafanie has led the team, she has been there for a long while and as everyone would know Stafanie has been one of our really outstanding players. She has taken West Indies to a different level on many occasions. However, we know that after a number of years that captaincy starts to take its toll on you and you know it’s sometimes a little difficult to continue to motivate the players as you would like to or even motivate yourself. So when we looked at the entire situation, we thought that is best.”
The lead selector continued, “If we take that pressure of the captaincy off of her [Taylor] and just allow her to play cricket. Then we can do two things with that one. We can get a new person into the role, who might be able to handle the situation differently and we will also be able to get Stafanie just continuing on concentrating on playing and getting her back to where she used to be. We looked at Hayley Matthews. She is presently what we consider to be one of the persons at the top of her game. She has been performing well but we have also looked at her maturity, her leadership of her national team and we think that this is the right time to make the change that we can basically breathe some new life into the team gets the value back just happy and concentrating on what she does best which is playing cricket and give somebody else that responsibility and the selectors had no hesitation in knowing that. Haley Matthews was the person to do that for us at this time.”
Meanwhile, speaking on the appointment, West Indies Women head coach, Courtney Walsh said, “She’s a student of the game, she’s still learning, she wants to do well, know where she wants to be, you know, that complete player and I think that in itself was probably one good step. And I’m sure she’s excited about being captain and I’m just giving you all the support that can, guide the process and to hopefully lead this team over the lead individuals in a number of tournaments and also as a coach you want to win something major with a team and hopefully, we can get the right combination…”
