CAN­TER­BURY, Eng­land – West In­dies Women’s head coach Shane Deitz says the re­gion­al team can­not con­tin­ue to de­pend sole­ly on cap­tain and star play Hay­ley Matthews if they are to be­come one of the best teams in the world.

Af­ter scor­ing a sparkling, un­beat­en cen­tu­ry in the open­ing T20I against Eng­land Women on Wednes­day, Matthews made just six runs in Fri­day’s sec­ond match and the West In­dies were re­strict­ed to a pal­try 81 for nine.

They went on to lose by nine wick­ets to give Eng­land Women an unas­sail­able 2-0 lead in the best-of-three se­ries.

Speak­ing to re­porters fol­low­ing the heavy de­feat, Deitz said while Matthews en­joyed the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of car­ry­ing the team on her shoul­ders, she could not do it on her own.

And while he ad­mit­ted that star play­ers De­an­dra Dot­tin and Chinelle Hen­ry were miss­ing on the tour, he main­tained that some of the oth­er play­ers in the squad need­ed to step up to the plate.

“We’re ob­vi­ous­ly miss­ing a few big names but that’s op­por­tu­ni­ties for oth­ers to come over and try to learn about the game in dif­fer­ent con­di­tions, so we’re do­ing that, work­ing hard try­ing to get bet­ter so there are great op­por­tu­ni­ties to learn.

“I think she [Hay­ley] has been shoul­der­ing the load for a long time of the team, and she likes to do that, she wants to be in­volved with every­thing,” Deitz said.

“But oth­er play­ers have got to step up, we’ve talked about that. It’s not on­ly about get­ting in­to the team and be­ing a part of the team, that’s just the start and the easy part. The hard part is what you do when you get here and how hard you work and the per­for­mances day in and day out.

“You may have one good day, but you have to back it up and back it up, and that’s what Hay­ley [Matthews] and Nat [Sciv­er-Brunt] and all the world class play­ers do. That’s the mes­sage and that’s what you’ve got to learn; learn to be on tour, learn to be in dif­fer­ent con­di­tions, all those things are part of be­ing a crick­eter,” he ex­plained.

De­spite hav­ing al­ready lost the se­ries to the num­ber two-ranked Eng­land, Deitz said they would be look­ing to put in a bet­ter per­for­mance in the fi­nal match on Mon­day.

He said for many of the new­er play­ers the tour was a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence and he hoped they would take away some pos­i­tives.

“We’ve got to take it on the chin, but ob­vi­ous­ly a poor per­for­mance. We’ve got to look at our­selves, try to im­prove every day, that’s all that we can do, just get bet­ter every day and that’s the mes­sage we have for the girls at the mo­ment.

“They’re go­ing to learn a lot and it’s about be­ing in this en­vi­ron­ment and see­ing some world class play­ers in the op­po­si­tion as well and that’s a great op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn from them and how they’re ad­just­ing to the con­di­tions and how they’re play­ing,” Deitz said.

“But at the end of the day, it’s a per­for­mance-based game and we got to play bet­ter so that’s what we’ll be try­ing to do in the next game on Mon­day.”

CMC