ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – Some of the re­gion’s most promis­ing fe­male crick­eters re­cent­ly ben­e­fit­ed from a Women’s Acad­e­my High-Per­for­mance Skills Camp aimed at hon­ing and de­vel­op­ing their skills.

The camp, which was host­ed by Crick­et West In­dies (CWI), ran from March 18 to 27 at the Coolidge Crick­et Ground in An­tigua and saw fran­chise-con­tract­ed play­ers work­ing along­side an ex­pe­ri­enced coach­ing team led by West In­dies Women’s head coach Shane Deitz.

The ini­tia­tive brought to­geth­er 12 CWI Acad­e­my-con­tract­ed play­ers and three fran­chise-con­tract­ed play­ers; Ear­nisha Fontaine (Do­mini­ca), Ner­is­sa Crafton (Saint Lu­cia), and Shene­ta Grim­mond (Guyana).

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, eight CWI path­way coach­es from across the re­gion par­tic­i­pat­ed in the camp, along with Sam Kirnon, a coach from Do­mini­ca, who was spe­cial­ly nom­i­nat­ed by the Wind­ward Is­lands Crick­et Board to at­tend.

Di­rec­tor of Crick­et at CWI, Miles Bas­combe hailed the ini­tia­tive, de­scrib­ing it as a “cru­cial in­vest­ment”.

“This Women’s Acad­e­my High-Per­for­mance Camp fo­cus­es on align­ment. It rep­re­sents a cru­cial in­vest­ment in the fu­ture of West In­dies crick­et by unit­ing our most promis­ing tal­ent and re­gion­al coach­es with the women’s head coach, es­tab­lish­ing a co­he­sive ap­proach to play­er de­vel­op­ment that aligns with the se­nior team brand,” Bas­combe said.

“The tech­ni­cal skills these young women will de­vel­op here are im­por­tant, but the abil­i­ty of our re­gion­al coach­es to sup­port our women play­ers in their ter­ri­to­ries is equal­ly valu­able.

“Our vi­sion is to build a sus­tain­able path­way that con­sis­tent­ly pro­duces world-class crick­eters ca­pa­ble of com­pet­ing at the high­est lev­el, and ini­tia­tives like this are fun­da­men­tal to that strat­e­gy,” he added.

The train­ing sched­ule fo­cused on sev­er­al key ar­eas, di­vid­ed be­tween spe­cial­ist bat­ting, bowl­ing, and field­ing ses­sions.

Play­ers en­gaged in sce­nario-based train­ing to im­prove de­ci­sion-mak­ing un­der pres­sure, game aware­ness, and tac­ti­cal play and there were al­so strength and con­di­tion­ing ses­sions de­signed to im­prove fit­ness and pre­vent in­juries.

The camp aimed to de­vel­op tech­ni­cal crick­et abil­i­ties as well as the men­tal re­silience and tac­ti­cal un­der­stand­ing need­ed to suc­ceed at high­er lev­els of com­pe­ti­tion.

Path­way coach­es were ex­posed to pro­gres­sive train­ing method­olo­gies as they pro­vid­ed tar­get­ed skill de­vel­op­ment for the play­ers.

(CMC)