The West In­dies Women’s Team [WI­WT]’s per­for­mance in the just-con­clud­ed tour of In­dia, coach Shane Deitz’s tour as­sess­ment, and com­ments made by Crick­et West In­dies [CWI] pres­i­dent Dr Kishore Shal­low on the Ma­son and Guest ra­dio show are the rai­son d’etre for an ur­gent strate­gic in­ter­ven­tion to put the wheels of change in­to ac­tion to cor­rect the struc­tur­al in­ept­ness of the re­gion­al women’s game.

In the One Day In­ter­na­tion­al [ODI] se­ries, In­dia won 3-0. They scored heav­i­ly in the first two match­es—9 for 314 and 5 for 358, re­spec­tive­ly, in their al­lot­ted 50 overs. In the third ODI, In­dia, bat­ting sec­ond, reached their tar­get of 163 in 28.5 overs af­ter the West In­dies were dis­missed for 162 in 38.5 overs. 

In the first match, the WI­WT was dis­missed for 103 in 26.2 overs, suf­fer­ing their worst de­feat in ODIs by 213 runs. In the sec­ond match, Matthews 106 and Camp­bell 38 en­sured some de­gree of re­spectabil­i­ty as the team was bowled out for 243 in 46.2 overs, los­ing by 115 runs.

On­ly three play­ers could score more than 50 runs in the 3-match se­ries: Matthews [106], Camp­belle [105], and Hen­ry, 61 in the on­ly game she played. In com­par­i­son, In­dia’s top sev­en bat­ters scored 50 runs or more, with four bat­ters scor­ing over 100 runs: De­ol [150], Mand­hana [148], debu­tant Raw­al [134], and Ro­drigues [112]. The West In­dies had one cen­tu­ri­on [Matthews 106] and one 50 [Hen­ry 61], while In­dia had one cen­tu­ri­on [De­ol 115] and four 50s—Mand­hana 91 and 51, Raw­al 76, and Ro­drigues 52. The WI­WT struck 61 fours and 5 six­es, while In­dia hit 91 fours and 12 six­es.

The WI­WT failed to bat their al­lot­ted 50 overs in all three match­es, com­pared to their op­po­nents, who bat­ted their al­lot­ted 50 overs in the first and sec­ond ODIs and 28.5 overs in the third ODI to reach the tar­get of 162.

The WI­WT used nine bowlers in de­liv­er­ing 128.5 overs, with 4 maid­ens con­ced­ing 839 runs and cap­tur­ing 17 wick­ets; two wick­ets were cap­tured via run out. The three fast bowlers—Con­nell, Dot­ting, and Al­leyne—took 4 wick­ets for 290 runs in 41 overs. The six spin­ners—Matthews, Ramharack, Fletch­er, James, Joseph, and Mu­nis­ar—took 13 wick­ets for 538 runs in 87.5 overs. In com­par­i­son, In­dia used 7 bowlers who de­liv­ered 111.3 overs with 7 maid­ens, cap­tur­ing 29 wick­ets with one run out. Their fast bowlers—Renu­ka, Sad­hu, and Thakor—snared 13 wick­ets for 234 runs in 58.5 overs, and their four spin­ners grabbed 16 wick­ets for 262 runs in 52.4 overs. There­fore, the In­di­an bowlers were bet­ter in the spin and fast bowl­ing de­part­ments.

Al­though los­ing 2-1 in the T20, five play­ers—Matthews [107], Joseph [77], Camp­belle [59], Dot­tin [77], and Hen­ry [50]—were able to score 50 runs or more in the three-match se­ries. How­ev­er, Joseph [49] and Dot­tin [52] were not able to bat longer when chas­ing 196 [T20-1] and Hen­ry [43] when chas­ing 218 [T20-3] to win, re­spec­tive­ly.

There­fore, based on the above da­ta, Coach Deitz re­marked that there are “lots of ar­eas” to work on, in­clud­ing “the team’s at­ti­tude, field­ing, and fit­ness lev­els.” He said, “Our bat­ters throw their wick­et away at 30, 40; you have to go on and make a hun­dred; that is ODI crick­et.”

Re­gard­ing bowl­ing, Deitz re­marked that “we haven’t been able to bowl con­sis­tent lines and lengths or bowl to a field, and on good wick­ets… you’ve got to be able to cut off one side of the field and be able to field. We leaked two bad balls an over go­ing for four min­i­mum, and the In­di­an team...bat­ted re­al­ly well, pun­ished any­thing we missed.”

The team’s per­for­mance is un­sur­pris­ing against the top teams—Aus­tralia, Eng­land, In­dia, South Africa, and New Zealand. How­ev­er, the WI­WT per­for­mance be­comes masked against the 2nd tier teams—Sri Lan­ka, Pak­istan, Bangladesh, and Ire­land. How­ev­er, Sri Lan­ka is ranked 5th on the ICC Women’s Cham­pi­onship ta­ble and au­to­mat­i­cal­ly qual­i­fies for the 2025 ICC Women’s World Cup in In­dia. The WI­WT are cur­rent­ly ranked 9th with 14 points and can fin­ish no high­er than 7th with 20 points if they de­feat Bangladesh 3-0 in the Caribbean in Jan­u­ary. They will par­tic­i­pate in the ICC qual­i­fiers for a sec­ond chance to qual­i­fy for the ODI World Cup lat­er in the year in In­dia.

Pres­i­dent Shal­low’s com­ments on the state of the women’s game pro­vide his­tor­i­cal struc­tur­al in­sight in­to the in­con­sis­tent per­for­mance of the se­nior team when they com­pete against the top teams and those in a sim­i­lar de­vel­op­men­tal stage. He told Ma­son, “The women need a lot of work be­cause a lot of the is­sues you see in­ter­na­tion­al­ly are be­cause of our re­gion­al and na­tion­al struc­ture.” Fur­ther­more, “…play­ers are not com­pet­i­tive when they play re­gion­al crick­et. The gap is so wide be­tween re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et. We have to up­skill our re­gion­al play­ers.” To ad­dress the prob­lem, he in­ti­mat­ed that “…get­ting more play­ers across the dif­fer­ent ter­ri­to­ries to play crick­et at the ju­nior stage is when you are go­ing to see a trans­for­ma­tion.” Re­gard­ing the loss in the 2nd ODI by 115 runs, Shal­low said, “We are nev­er go­ing to be suc­cess­ful un­less we have got 11, 15, re­al­ly 20 world-class play­ers, so how we do that is what we are look­ing at.”

A SMART, holis­tic strate­gic de­vel­op­ment plan must be de­vel­oped and im­ple­ment­ed to ad­dress the fol­low­ing:

Age group grass­roots de­vel­op­ment—U13, U16, and U19—in­creas­es the pool of play­ers with skillsets aligned to the evo­lu­tion of the women’s game, with a fo­cus on run­ning be­tween the wick­et, re­duc­tion of dot ball per­cent­ages, in­creas­ing strike rates, pow­er-hit­ting—4s and six­es, cre­ative bat­ting un­ortho­dox, fast bowl­ing pace, seam and swing, slow­er de­liv­er­ies and agili­ty in the field, read­ing the game, and lead­er­ship skills.

More com­pet­i­tive play­ers through U16/19 and A team tours [home and away]. A few coun­tries that can be ap­proached are Ire­land, the Nether­lands, Zim­bab­we, Thai­land, and Sri Lan­ka. The ra­tio­nal log­ic of in­creas­ing match­es to en­sure the skills de­vel­oped above is then ex­am­ined through com­pet­i­tive match­es where play­ers are giv­en a fair run to their abil­i­ty and not wor­ried about be­ing dis­card­ed if they fail in the present sys­tem when called up to the se­nior team.

Com­pe­ti­tion for spots More in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et will pro­vide com­pe­ti­tion for places on the se­nior team. It will ad­dress some of the cur­rent im­bal­ances in the team where there are play­ers whose roles are not clear—bat­ter/bowler or, worst to think, en­sur­ing eleven [11] play­ers are on the field. In the re­cent se­ries against In­dia, they had 6 bat­ters, in­clud­ing the wick­et­keep­er, and 5 spe­cial­ist bowlers, of which Deep­ti Shar­ma is an all­rounder. The same can be said for Aus­tralia and Eng­land, where play­ers’ roles are ev­i­dent even though some may dou­ble up roles as bat­ters and bowlers. So, when a play­er is re­placed, it can be in terms of the match plan.

Re­search—Ad­di­tion­al­ly, a re­search el­e­ment must feed in­to the strate­gic sys­tems.

While there has been on­go­ing con­ver­sa­tion on the state of West In­dies crick­et on and off the field as it re­lates to per­for­mance and gov­er­nance, fo­cus on the women’s game has to be on the front burn­er as West In­dies women’s crick­et nears 50 years in 2026.