West Indies Women’s captain, Hayley Matthews, says the emergence of young players was one bright spark amid the gloom of another series whitewash at the hands of powerhouses England Women.
The hosts suffered an eight-wicket crushing in the final Twenty20 International here last Thursday, to crash to a 5-0 series defeat, coming on the heels of a 3-0 drubbing in the One-Day International series earlier this month.
With key players like former captain Stafanie Taylor and the experienced bowling trio of Anisa Mohammed, Shakera Selman and Shamilia Connell all missing, the home side were forced to debut the West Indies Under-19 duo of Djenaba Joseph and Trishan Holder, along with 25-year-old Kaysia Schultz.
And Matthews believes the move was an investment in the future.
“Obviously we would’ve had a couple of injuries throughout this series – missing so many of our experienced players,” Matthews said.
“So yeah, the results didn’t go our way but at the same time, I think it was really good that we were able to get young players playing and getting experience so that when the more experienced players are back, we can build a really strong core along with the youth as well.”
She added: “It’s really good to see. They’re very, very young players at the Under-19 level so it was really good to have them amongst the group and learning as much as they possibly can.”
West Indies Women struggled throughout the series, the final match summing up their misery when they were dismissed cheaply for 43 in the 17th over after choosing to bat first at Kensington Oval.
Overall, the hosts found themselves short in all key departments but Matthews it was important to extract the small positives.
“I think what we can really do is look at the positives that can come out of this series,” the 24-year-old all-rounder noted.
“We showed some really good intent with the bat in a couple of games which we can definitely look at and hopefully try to replicate a bit more often. With the ball we saw improvements and some bright sparks with certain players.
“There’s still a lot we can take out of this series and have a nice Christmas and hopefully come back in January ready to play some good cricket.” (CMC)
