Walsh commits to getting Windies Women back on track
NEWLY appointed West Indies Women’s Head Coach Courtney Walsh says he is committed to getting players to display the free-spirited approach that brought them the Twenty20 (T20) world title in 2016.
“I’d like to see us smiling again, playing the West Indies brand of cricket that I know we can play,” he said during a virtual media conference yesterday.
“I’m not going to leave any stone unturned. I’m going to go right through everything to ensure that we give ourselves the best chance of improving.
“We have to improve in all aspects and facets of our game. My whole idea is to refocus and re-energise [players] and try to spot new talent as well,” said the great former West Indies fast bowler.
West Indies Women have fallen off since their global T20 triumph four years ago.
They were semi-finalists at the 2018 showpiece in the Caribbean, but crashed out at the group stage of the 2020 edition, which was held from February to March in Australia.
Only last month, West Indies, rated sixth in the world, were swept 0-5 by hosts and number two ranked England Women in a five-match series.
The Caribbean side has lost 13-consecutive contests in bilateral T20 series. Last year West Indies went down 0-3 to world champions Australia, followed by a 0-5 defeat to India.
“We won [the T20 World Cup] a few years ago, [and] a couple years ago we were in a semi-final, so that’s the sort of thing we want to get back on. That is going to come from consistency — how well we execute, how we plan, how we get our tactical awareness up, and just everything. The whole idea is to give them self-belief, that confidence,” Walsh, who is the highest placed West Indian on the list of Test wicket-takers with 519 victims, said.
Walsh, 57, a former Bangladesh bowling coach, served as assistant coach to Gus Logie during the West Indies Women’s T20 World Cup campaign in Australia.
He did not feature as part of the management staff — which was led by interim Head Coach Andre Coley — on the recent England tour.
In that series, the English women won the first two matches by identical 47-run margins before recording victories in the third and fourth contests by 20 and 44 runs, respectively. The home team eked out a three-wicket win in the final match, which was reduced to five overs per side due to rain.
“I look at the series in England, and yes, it was a five-nil beating we got, but I don’t think we played as badly as probably that scoreline suggested. I’ll take out the positives from that series and put together whatever I see or deem fit for moving forward.
“I’m looking back, not just on the England series — I was involved in Australia and I was involved against India [last year], and combine those together. The good thing is that I have an insight…as to what I saw and some ideas that I had,” Walsh, one of the legendary figures in world cricket, told journalists.
“It’s just working on the skill sets and the talent and trying to get them to buy into it. We have to focus on what we have to do, and at the end of the day the team result is what is going to matter,” the former Test captain explained.