TAROUBA, Trinidad – Windies Women’s captain Stafanie Taylor said she hopes her side can maintain the momentum they gained from the clean sweep over Sri Lanka Women in the first round of the ICC Women’s Championship.
The Windies Women beat Sri Lanka in the three-match series by six wickets, seven wickets and 40 runs respectively, contested on October 11, 13 and 15 at the Brian Lara Cricket Academy.
“Winning all three matches was important,” said Taylor. “They say winning is a habit and success breeds success. This will help our confidence going forward in the Championship. Getting all six Championship points from this series was important and we did it.
“Our aim was to win all the matches in the series and we achieved that objective, so from that perspective we were satisfied. We still have work to do and there are areas we need to tighten, so that when we play some of the more experienced sides, we can seriously challenge them.”
Taylor said she was happy with her team’s performance but that there are areas to improve.
“Our spin bowling more or less has been one of our strengths in recent times,” she said. “We have an experienced spin bowling unit, including Anisa Mohammed, Afy Fletcher, Hayley Matthews and myself, we all have over 50 international matches, so our success as a group in this area was not totally unexpected.
“We are still not satisfied with the totals that we put on the board. We have to post bigger totals, as this is one of the things that hurt us in this year’s ICC Women’s World Cup in England. We have to post consistently big totals, so that we can put pressure on the opposition and give our bowling attack more runs to defend.
On the next round of matches, Taylor said: “We are scheduled to face New Zealand early next year on the road and that will be a tough series. The White Ferns on home soil are very difficult to beat. Our last trip there was not very memorable, so we will have to prepare extremely well for that series and try to reverse that result.”
On the importance of the ICC Women’s Championship for your team, she said: “We are a group of highly motivated, young women and we want to prove ourselves on the World stage. Therefore, we can only improve by playing regularly at a high level, so we welcome the opportunity that the Championship provides for us.”
SCHEDULE OF MATCHES
(Start times in brackets)
October
Wed 11 1st ICC Women’s Championship ODI – Windies Women won by 6 wickets – Brian Lara Cricket Academy, Trinidad
Fri 13 2nd ICC Women’s Championship ODI – Windies Women won by 7 wickets – Brian Lara Cricket Academy
Sun 15 3rd ICC Women’s Championship ODI – Windies Women won by 40 runs – Brian Lara Cricket Academy