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DESPITE a comfortable win over Pakistan Women in the opening One Day International (ODI), West Indies Women’s assistant coach Robert Samuels is demanding more from his players as the regional team aims to seal the three-match series, on Thursday.
The second match will be played in Karachi, Pakistan, from 1 am TT time.
West Indies Women won the first match by 45 runs, on Monday. Opener Deandra Dottin struck 132 and Hayley Matthews hit 57 to guide West Indies Women to 253/8 batting first before spinner Matthews snatched 3/31 in ten overs to limit Pakistan Women to 208/9 in response.
Samuels, a former Jamaica and West Indies cricketer, said, “We are trying to eliminate complacency. We are trying to better our performance or score the same amount of runs. We are looking to score 250 plus, we are looking for centuries from our top batters, we are looking for top class performances. We have had three centuries so far this season, (but) we are looking for more.”
Samuels congratulated Dottin for her highest individual score in ODI cricket and said more performances are needed similar to the effort of Matthews.
“You know after good performances some teams tend to drop their guard a little bit, but we can’t afford to do so.”
Speaking about the bowling effort of the team, Samuels said, “I would have loved for us to have restricted them to under 180 or just about 180…but it is our first outing in Pakistan, the girls are getting acclimatised, they have to get accustomed to playing in Pakistan under different conditions so it was a decent performance.”
Samuels commended the bowling of Matthews and also said pacers Shakera Selman and Shamilia Connell had creditable performances.
Samuels added that spinners Anisa Mohammed and Qiana Joseph were a bit expensive, but knows they can improve as they play more matches in Pakistan.
The West Indies Women’s coaching staff, which has many new members including head coach Courtney Walsh, recently identified specific roles for players.
“Remember this coaching staff started working with this team January of this year and we have had three camps, so I have just gotten to know the players a little bit better and when we got together at this (recently held) camp we decided that we are heading in that direction. I will be honest with you that before now we did not (know the specific roles for each player), but since then we have started to give players roles and the roles that we are giving players is basically the roles that they are best suited to play.”
In terms of the batting openers, Dottin and Rashada Williams play different roles. Samuels said Williams, a newcomer to the team, can anchor the innings by batting long, while the experienced Dottin has the ability to play more shots but is trying to be more patient.
“It is the direction that we must go to where people have their roles, play their roles and we tweak it along the way in terms of how they play their roles.”
Matthews, who has opened the batting for years, batted at number five in the first ODI.
Samuels said Matthews can help West Indies Women score more rapidly in the latter overs by batting lower down the order.
“That is something that we are looking at. Hayley Matthews is one of the more complete players in the set-up in terms of playing both pace and spin. We are also looking at the finish of the innings where the last ten, 15 overs we tend to slow down instead of accelerating.”
Samuels said Matthews can give the innings “impetus” in the closing overs.
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