ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – New head coach Shane Deitz said he is look­ing for a pool of about 20 play­ers to form the nu­cle­us of the West In­dies Women’s team dur­ing his tenure.

The 48-year-old Aus­tralian start­ed in the new role ahead of the Women’s Caribbean Pre­mier League in Au­gust, and he is prepar­ing to take the side on a tour to his home­land for a se­ries of three One-day and three Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­als.

He re­placed for­mer Ja­maica and West In­dies cap­tain, and record-set­ting fast bowler Court­ney Walsh, whose con­tract was not re­newed fol­low­ing a re­view of the team’s per­for­mance in April this year.

Robert Samuels, the for­mer Ja­maica cap­tain and West In­dies open­er, was an as­sis­tant to Walsh, but his con­tract was al­so not re­newed, but he was ap­point­ed in­ter­im head coach for the home se­ries of the ODIs and T20Is against Ire­land in Ju­ly.

Deitz said West In­dies Women al­ready had a core group of play­ers up­on which he hoped to build a for­mi­da­ble fight­ing force that will play a Caribbean brand of the game that has be­come the hall­mark of oth­er teams around the world.

“We will work to­wards that, so they will have the abil­i­ty to play that style of crick­et, and I think that is the most suc­cess­ful (style) around the world and the way that Aus­tralia plays at the mo­ment, so we are def­i­nite­ly go­ing to fol­low that method and play that style of crick­et and play the Caribbean way,” he said dur­ing a re­cent vir­tu­al news con­fer­ence.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly, we have a few play­ers who are in the top of the world rank­ing like Hay­ley (Matthews), Ste­fanie (Tay­lor), (Chinelle) Hen­ry is al­so show­ing signs of be­ing an elite crick­eter.”

He added: “We have got some great spin­ners, so there is a nu­cle­us there and then some younger play­ers have come in­to the squad and like the ex­pe­ri­enced ones, they have been proven over time to be world class.

“But we need up to 20 play­ers that are world class, so there are a lot of play­ers we have to add to that… and there is a lot of young tal­ent there, and we are work­ing to get those up to the lev­el of our top play­ers.”

Deitz said the tour of Aus­tralia will be an op­por­tu­ni­ty for him to gauge the strength of the team, and to cre­ate a long-term de­vel­op­ment plan for the play­ers with a view to chal­leng­ing for a World Cup in the near fu­ture.

“We need up to 20 play­ers who are ca­pa­ble of play­ing in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et,” he said. “To do that will take five years or so…

“The re­al­i­ty is at the mo­ment, we are start­ing from a po­si­tion where we are a lit­tle bit be­hind the bet­ter teams in the world, so we have some catch­ing up to do. It ain’t go­ing to be easy.

“We are go­ing to try dif­fer­ent things around the Caribbean to see what works and what suits each play­er and coun­try and then get them to a high­er-class lev­el.”

Deitz said at the heart of the dri­ve for suc­cess will be play­ers tak­ing greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their fit­ness and prepa­ra­tion, and not sole­ly wait­ing for an or­gan­ised en­vi­ron­ment such as a train­ing camp to get the work need­ed done.

“I think it’s a non-ne­go­tiable at any stan­dard of high-lev­el sport; you got­ta work hard to have suc­cess, so it’s not on­ly work hard, it’s work smart as well and that is prob­a­bly the key — a prop­er pro­gramme that fits the way we train and our fa­cil­i­ties, and what we have got here to of­fer the play­ers,” he said.

“It’s not about just when you are in a camp or named to the team or when you are on tour, but play­ers are go­ing to be re­spon­si­ble for do­ing work out­side of those WI camps and be­ing self-suf­fi­cient in their own en­vi­ron­ment, and we will sup­port them to be able to train and on their own or (with) a team lo­cal­ly to be­come elite ath­letes.”

West In­dies Women are ranked sixth in both the One-Day In­ter­na­tion­al and Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­al for­mats.

CMC