ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – West In­dies Women’s head coach Shane Deitz has ex­pressed con­cern with the sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty of his bat­ters to spin bowl­ing as they pre­pare for next month’s World Cup Qual­i­fiers in Pak­istan.

The West In­dies Women will bat­tle with Bangladesh, Pak­istan, Ire­land, Scot­land and Thai­land from April 4 to 19, for two spots at the Women’s World Cup, which will take place in In­dia in Oc­to­ber.

Speak­ing dur­ing a vir­tu­al me­dia in­ter­ac­tion on Mon­day, Deitz said while he was im­pressed with the stan­dard of play in the just com­plet­ed CG Unit­ed Women’s Su­per50 Cup, the in­abil­i­ty of bat­ters to play spin bowl­ing was an area of con­cern.

Deitz point­ed to the fact that the ma­jor­i­ty of teams at the Qual­i­fiers will re­ly on spin­ners, mak­ing it nec­es­sary for West In­dies Women’s bat­ters to be pro­fi­cient against them.

“It’s been a good two weeks look­ing at some of the up and com­ing and old­er play­ers who have been in West In­dies crick­et for some time.

“It was a good op­por­tu­ni­ty to see every­one in ac­tion…and a good op­por­tu­ni­ty for me to see what was out there. There were some re­al­ly good pos­i­tive things and some things that we need to im­prove on…”Deitz said.

“I think the spin bowl­ing across the whole tour­na­ment was re­al­ly good, but the main thing that stood out to me was the bat­ting and the lack of scores, the low strike rates, no big hun­dreds made by any­one in the whole tour­na­ment.

“So, the bat­ting side of it and par­tic­u­lar­ly play­ing against spin bowl­ing is a bit of a con­cern mov­ing for­ward, par­tic­u­lar­ly the younger play­ers not re­al­ly hav­ing big scores and dom­i­nat­ing the tour­na­ment, which we need them to do,” he added.

How­ev­er, Deitz said plans were al­ready in mo­tion to ad­dress the prob­lem ahead of the Qual­i­fiers.

“Mov­ing for­ward we’re putting some plans to­geth­er on how to tack­le that and the big im­prove­ment that we need to do be­cause ob­vi­ous­ly play­ing most teams in women’s crick­et, spin is a big fac­tor.

“We’re go­ing to the Qual­i­fiers where Pak­istan, Bangladesh, Thai­land will be bowl­ing 90 to 95 per cent spin bowl­ing to us, so it’s some­thing we’re go­ing to work on and that was prob­a­bly the biggest dis­ap­point­ment of the 50-over com­pe­ti­tion,” Deitz said.

CMC