LA­HORE– West In­dies Women’s head coach Shane Deitz has called on his play­ers to “be more con­sis­tent and to fight hard­er” as they pre­pare for their cru­cial World Cup Qual­i­fi­er against host Pak­istan on Mon­day.

The re­gion­al team has had a rocky start to the com­pe­ti­tion, los­ing their open­ing match to Scot­land and then squeez­ing past Ire­land in their sec­ond match.

They must now win their re­main­ing match­es against Pak­istan, Bangladesh and Thai­land if they are to claim one of the two qual­i­fy­ing spots for the Women’s World Cup, which will bowl off in In­dia in Sep­tem­ber.

Deitz said the West In­dies was one of the most tal­ent­ed teams in the tour­na­ment and now was the time to as­sert them­selves.

“We have to be more con­sis­tent, and we have to fight hard­er. When we start fight­ing hard­er, we get des­per­ate to win the game and we looked a bet­ter team.

“We just have to be­lieve in our­selves, be­lieve in our skills. I think we are one of the most skill­ful teams here with some great play­ers, so we have to be­lieve and trust in our abil­i­ty and take it to the op­po­si­tion a bit more,” Deitz said.

“We have to be a bit more proac­tive, a bit more ag­gres­sive with bat and ball, and that’s what we have to be, not just sort of go­ing through the mo­tions and hope to win. We’ll go out there and re­al­ly try hard to win the game from ball one and get on top re­al­ly ear­ly in the game.

“We have to back our­selves and stamp our au­thor­i­ty on this com­pe­ti­tion,” he main­tained.

CMC