This year’s re­gion­al Women’s Un­der 19 Ris­ing Stars T20 Cham­pi­onship is of his­toric sig­nif­i­cance for re­gion­al women’s crick­et. At the end of the tour­na­ment the first West In­dies Un­der-19 women’s team will be se­lect­ed to be­gin prepa­ra­tion for the in­au­gur­al ICC Women’s Un­der-19 T20 World Cup in South Africa, Jan­u­ary 2023.

As such this year’s tour­na­ment of­fers play­ers far more pur­pose than pre­vi­ous cham­pi­onships as they will be seek­ing to ad­dress the re­gion­al se­lec­tors with per­for­mances that can re­sult in their se­lec­tion to trav­el to South Africa.

In ad­di­tion to the host Trinidad and To­ba­go, Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos, Wind­ward Is­lands, Lee­ward Is­lands and Guyana, the USA who is an au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­er like the West In­dies for the 2023 World Cup will be par­tic­i­pat­ing in the re­gion­al tour­na­ment as part of its prepa­ra­tion.

From a de­vel­op­men­tal per­spec­tive, this year’s tour­na­ment [if nev­er be­fore] will pro­vide CWI and re­spec­tive ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards with a stock of first­hand knowl­edge [over­all skillsets to play the game at an in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el, fit­ness, coach­ing etc.] of the cur­rent state of women and girls crick­et in the re­gion.

Hope­ful­ly, such knowl­edge would be act­ed up­on ex­pe­di­tious­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly to en­sure that the re­gion can pro­duce qual­i­ty play­ers for the bi­en­ni­al ICC event—the next ICC U19 World Cup should be in 2025.

The ben­e­fits of an as­sess­ment of the stan­dard of play at this year’s tour­na­ment should be com­ple­ment­ed with age group - U-10, U-13, and U-15- de­vel­op­ment serv­ing as de­vel­op­men­tal fore­run­ners for the U19 and sub­se­quent­ly the na­tion­al se­nior team. An in­te­grat­ed sys­tem­at­ic de­vel­op­ment ap­proach will pro­vide phase-by-phase skill de­vel­op­ment.

There is no need to rein­vent the wheel as the mod­el used for boys’ can be adapt­ed for girls.

It is im­por­tant to note that de­vel­op­ment [greater ac­cess to fi­nan­cial and hu­man re­sources etc.] of women’s crick­et is grow­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly [55 coun­tries ranked by ICC for T20 at the end of June 2022], es­pe­cial­ly in tra­di­tion­al coun­tries such as Aus­tralia, Eng­land, New Zealand, In­dia and South Africa.

As such re­gion­al strate­gic ap­proach has to be de­vel­oped ex­pe­di­tious­ly and im­ple­ment­ed ef­fec­tive­ly to en­sure that re­gion­al women’s crick­et does not fall fur­ther be­hind the fore­run­ners- Aus­tralia, South Africa, Eng­land, In­dia, and New Zealand.

From a non-di­rect crick­et­ing per­spec­tive, more par­ents, guardians, teach­ers and oth­er key stake­hold­ers need to be ul­tra-sup­port­ive of girls’ par­tic­i­pa­tion in crick­et [and oth­er sports]. This re­quires a cul­tur­al par­a­digm shift. It is equal­ly prac­ti­cal for girls to study and play crick­et [all sports] as well as do oth­er cul­tur­al ac­tiv­i­ties. The out­comes have the po­ten­tial for fur­ther con­tribut­ing to holis­tic de­vel­op­ment which is very crit­i­cal in nav­i­gat­ing the chal­lenges of mod­ern-day life.

For in­stance, play­ers who are se­lect­ed at the end of the re­gion­al team will get an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be part of a re­gion­al team which will al­low for team bond­ing, build­ing friend­ships, and be­ing ex­posed to dif­fer­ent re­gion­al cul­tures. As part of the prepa­ra­tions for the 2023 World Cup, play­ers will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to play against oth­er coun­tries ei­ther home or away.

The away trav­el will pro­vide im­por­tant in­sights in­to the glob­al world that some if not all have nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced as yet. Par­ents [es­pe­cial­ly moth­ers], guardians, teach­ers and coach­es may al­so have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to trav­el or vic­ar­i­ous­ly lived through ex­pe­ri­ences that would have missed out on when they were grow­ing up when the sport was seen as pre­dom­i­nant­ly a se­ri­ous male ac­tiv­i­ty.

At the same time, par­ents, guardians and coach­es must en­cour­age their daugh­ters/trainees to have fun while they hone their skills. Par­ents have to be sup­port­ive of good per­for­mance as well as when the chips are down maybe due to a dip in form or in­jury. At the same time, they must not ap­ply un­due pres­sure on play­ers to the point that they lose in­ter­est. Such ex­ter­nal over-com­pet­i­tive be­hav­iour will do more harm than good.

The match­es are be­ing played at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my [BLCA] and Diego Mar­tin Sport­ing Com­plex [DM­SC] from 5-13 Ju­ly.