ARNOS VALE, St Vin­cent – The stage is set for a block­buster T20 In­ter­na­tion­al se­ries at the icon­ic Arnos Vale Sta­di­um, and West In­dies Women’s cap­tain Hay­ley Matthews is buzzing with an­tic­i­pa­tion ahead of the open­er against world cham­pi­ons Aus­tralia.

Speak­ing to the me­dia on the eve of the first T20, Matthews ex­pressed her de­light at bring­ing in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et back to St Vin­cent, a venue she de­scribed as spe­cial for the team and its pas­sion­ate sup­port­ers.

“Yeah, well, ob­vi­ous­ly, pret­ty hap­py to be here in the is­lands and here in St Vin­cent,” Matthews said. “Some­where we prob­a­bly haven’t been for quite a while, so it’s gonna be pret­ty fun to be back out here at such an icon­ic sta­di­um. We know the Vin­cy fans are al­ways very pas­sion­ate about their game and the West In­dies team per­form­ing well. It will be re­al­ly good if we could get out there and give them some good per­for­mances and a lot to cheer for.”

With one eye firm­ly on the up­com­ing T20 World Cup, the West In­dies squad is in­fused with ex­cit­ing young tal­ent.

When asked about emerg­ing play­ers to watch, Matthews was quick to high­light two ris­ing stars who could make an im­pact against the mighty Aus­tralians.

“Yeah, we got Ebony Brath­waite, who on­ly played one match so far. Made her de­but last time out against Sri Lan­ka. “So yeah, if she gets a go this time around, it’ll be in­ter­est­ing to see how she goes. Janelle Glas­gow is some­one who’s prob­a­bly been around for the last few months now. She cer­tain­ly showed some great sparks when we played against Sri Lan­ka again in the last se­ries. So I think those are two peo­ple that I’ll def­i­nite­ly be keen to see this time around.”

Fac­ing the num­ber-one-ranked T20 side in the world is a daunt­ing prospect, but Matthews is rel­ish­ing the chal­lenge. Rather than be­ing over­awed by the vis­i­tors’ rep­u­ta­tion, the skip­per is urg­ing her team to fo­cus on their own de­struc­tive ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

“I think we got­ta fo­cus a lot on our skills and what we can do re­al­ly well. Ob­vi­ous­ly, quite a chal­leng­ing team, and the high­est-ranked in the world. But teams have had suc­cess against them, and the good thing about T20 crick­et is that it on­ly takes one or two match-win­ners to re­al­ly go out there and change a game. It’s gonna be re­al­ly im­por­tant for us that our big play­ers step up. That’s gonna be key to us hav­ing a suc­cess­ful cam­paign. But we cer­tain­ly have the play­ers with­in the group to do so.”

With high ex­pec­ta­tions from the home faith­ful, Matthews ac­knowl­edged the pres­sure that comes with lead­er­ship but em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of en­joy­ment as a cat­a­lyst for the team’s best crick­et.

“I guess just go back to my plans, try to ex­e­cute them re­al­ly well, and at the same time en­joy my­self out there. As a West In­dies group and as a team, we prob­a­bly play the best when we’re out there hav­ing fun on the field. So it’s cer­tain­ly the kind of brand we’re gonna wan­na play go­ing for­ward.”

On a per­son­al note, the all-rounder is thrilled to be back at full strength fol­low­ing a shoul­der op­er­a­tion. Hav­ing al­ready fea­tured in the WPL and the re­cent se­ries against Sri Lan­ka, Matthews is grate­ful for a smooth re­cov­ery.

“Pret­ty hap­py with the re­cov­ery and how things went in such a short space of time. So pret­ty thank­ful to be back out and play­ing for the team again.”

As the Windies fine-tune their prepa­ra­tions for the World Cup, this se­ries against Aus­tralia rep­re­sents the ul­ti­mate mea­sur­ing stick. Matthews iden­ti­fied the bat­ting unit as a key area for im­prove­ment fol­low­ing the Sri Lan­ka se­ries, but she re­mains con­fi­dent in the depth of the line­up.

“I guess just putting our bat­ting in­nings to­geth­er prop­er­ly,” she ex­plained. “The con­di­tions in St. Vin­cent are cer­tain­ly gonna suit us a lot bet­ter. We prob­a­bly weren’t at our best in the bat­ting de­part­ment when we looked at our top five and top six bat­ters. But we do know the skill and the tal­ent that we do have with­in that group.”

She added a pos­i­tive spin, not­ing the emer­gence of the next gen­er­a­tion as a sil­ver lin­ing. “The fact that we were able to per­form at the lev­el that we did against Sri Lan­ka with­out a lot of our big con­trib­u­tors re­al­ly fir­ing, cer­tain­ly shows that we have young play­ers who are start­ing to step up. So it’s kind of just about putting it all to­geth­er at the right time now.”

CMC