ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – Guyanese all-rounder Realean­na Grim­mond and Kit­tit­ian fast bowler Jahzara Clax­ton have been in­clud­ed in a West In­dies Women 15-mem­ber squad to tour Eng­land lat­er this month.

Grim­mond and Clax­ton are the on­ly two changes from the West In­dies team that took place in last month’s ICC Women’s Crick­et World Cup Qual­i­fiers in Pak­istan, re­plac­ing the Ja­maican duo of wick­et­keep­er/bat­ter Rasha­da Williams and all-rounder Chinelle Hen­ry.

No­tably miss­ing from the squad that will play three T20 In­ter­na­tion­als and three One-Day In­ter­na­tion­als be­tween May 21 and June 8, are vet­er­ans De­an­dra Dot­tin and Shamil­ia Con­nell, who were al­so ex­clud­ed from the World Cup Qual­i­fiers.

Dot­tin missed out af­ter sus­tain­ing an in­jury in the Women’s Pre­mier League in In­dia, while no rea­son was giv­en for Con­nell be­ing dropped.

Head coach Shane Deitz said the team was ea­ger to move on from the dis­ap­point­ment of not qual­i­fy­ing for the Women’s World Cup.

“We brought a good team to Eng­land and we’re look­ing for­ward to putting on a good per­for­mance for the crowd over there and all our sup­port­ers watch­ing back in the Caribbean.

“It’s go­ing to be an ex­cel­lent tour for us to reestab­lish our­selves as a world class team with world class play­ers,” Deitz said.

“The girls have been work­ing hard since the Pak­istan qual­i­fi­ca­tion and play­ing some crick­et at the T20 Blaze in the Caribbean. It’s now time to switch up to in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et, put on a good dis­play and give our sup­port­ers some­thing to cheer about back in the Caribbean.”

Deitz said they have been play­ing good T20 crick­et over the past year and a half, and he ex­pect­ed the Hay­ley Matthews-led out­fit to give a good ac­count of them­selves.

“Go­ing to Eng­land is a fan­tas­tic op­por­tu­ni­ty to play one of the best teams in the world for a long time and to re­al­ly test our skills and put in prac­tice what we’ve talked about off the pitch.

“The talk is cheap off the pitch; we’re go­ing to put that talk in­to ac­tion and go out against Eng­land and play some good crick­et. We’ve got the T20Is first, and that’s where we’ve played our bet­ter crick­et in the past 12 to 18 months, so we’re look­ing for­ward to get­ting the tour off to a good start and play some good at­tack­ing crick­et the West In­di­an way,” Deitz added.

Mean­while, Di­rec­tor of Crick­et Miles Bas­combe said the tour had come at the per­fect time with the Women’s T20 Blaze hav­ing con­clud­ed over the week­end.

“This up­com­ing tour of Eng­land of­fers our women an im­por­tant op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­assert them­selves on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage. It’s a chance to demon­strate the tal­ent, grit, and char­ac­ter that are syn­ony­mous with West In­dies crick­et,” Bas­combe said.

“The on­go­ing T20 Blaze com­pe­ti­tion has come at an op­por­tune time, giv­ing many of our se­nior and emerg­ing play­ers the chance to stay match-ready and sharp­en their skills in a com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment. We re­main com­mit­ted to strength­en­ing our women’s pro­gramme and be­lieve this tour is a vi­tal step for­ward in our col­lec­tive jour­ney.”

SQUAD

WEST IN­DIES WOMEN: Hay­ley Matthews (cap­tain), She­maine Camp­belle (vice-cap­tain), Aaliyah Al­leyne, Jahzara Clax­ton, Afy Fletch­er, Cher­ry Ann Fras­er, Shabi­ka Gajn­abi, Jan­nil­lea Glas­gow, Realean­na Grim­mond, Zai­da James, Qiana Joseph, Mandy Man­gru, Ash­mi­ni Mu­nis­ar, Kar­ish­ma Ramharack, Stafanie Tay­lor.

CMC