LON­DON – West In­dies Women stars Hay­ley Matthews and Anisa Mo­hammed have been named in the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil’s One-Day In­ter­na­tion­al team-of-the-year for 2021.

They are a part of a unit which in­cludes South Africans Lizelle Lee and Ma­rizanne Kapp, and sees Eng­land’s Heather Knight be­ing cho­sen as cap­tain.

Matthews, a styl­ish right-han­der and steady off-spin­ner, scored 380 runs – in­clud­ing one hun­dred against Pak­istan Women in An­tigua – and snared 18 wick­ets at 22 runs apiece dur­ing the last year.

Mo­hammed, mean­while, claimed 20 wick­ets to be the joint high­est wick­et-tak­er for 2021. She boast­ed an av­er­age of 18 and an econ­o­my rate of just over 3-1/2 runs per over.

“It’s pret­ty ex­cit­ing. Go­ing in­to 2021 I would have set some pret­ty big goals for my­self, so I was hap­py that I was able to go out there and have a good year,” said the 23-year-old Matthews who made her in­ter­na­tion­al de­but as a teenag­er sev­en years ago.

“Look­ing at it from a team stand-point I guess it was good for us to see where we were at last year and look­ing back now on the growth we’ve had when it comes down to our bowl­ing, bat­ting, and field­ing.

“It’s been re­al­ly good to see the progress and it’s some­thing my­self and the team will be look­ing to build on in 2022.”

Mo­hammed, 34, is a vet­er­an of the game, hav­ing al­ready played 134 ODIs and 117 Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­als, and tak­en 171 wick­ets in the short­er for­mat and 125 in the short­est.

And she ad­mit­ted to be­ing “shocked” by her suc­cess over the last year.

“I feel re­al­ly ex­cit­ed and ho­n­oured to be named in the ICC Women’s ODI Team of the Year…,” Mo­hammed said.

“I didn’t play crick­et for al­most a year and a half be­cause of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, so I just want­ed to have fun af­ter not play­ing for so long.

“I want­ed to go out and do my best and help my team as best as I could, and I was ac­tu­al­ly shocked when I saw I got the most wick­ets.”

Crick­et West In­dies pres­i­dent, Ricky Sker­ritt, said the ho­n­our for the duo was a re­flec­tion of their com­mit­ment to the game and would serve as a mo­ti­va­tion to the West In­dies squad.

“Their se­lec­tions speak tes­ti­mo­ny to their own out­stand­ing in­di­vid­ual at­ti­tudes to­wards im­prov­ing their own game, but it al­so pro­vides an im­por­tant re­turn to CWI on our re­fo­cused Women’s pro­gram,” he said.

“There is still much work to be done to grow and im­prove the women’s game in our re­gion, but this glob­al achieve­ment by Anisa and Hay­ley should pro­vide in­spi­ra­tion to all of their col­leagues, and to all stake­hold­ers.”

West In­dies Women are cur­rent­ly in South Africa for a four-day ODI se­ries against the hosts bowl­ing off Jan­u­ary 28.

CMC

MATCH SCHED­ULE (all match­es at Im­pe­r­i­al Wan­der­ers Sta­di­um, Jo­han­nes­burg)

Day match­es start 10 am lo­cal time (4 am T&T time)

Day/night match­es start 2pm lo­cal time (8 am T&T time)

Tues­day: warm-up match – vs South Africa XI (day)

Jan­u­ary 28: 1st ODI (day/night)

Jan­u­ary 31: 2nd ODI (day)

Feb­ru­ary 3: 3rd ODI (day/night)

Feb­ru­ary 6: 4th ODI (day)