BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – New­ly ap­point­ed West In­dies Women coach, Court­ney Walsh, says he hopes to in­stil a new sense of self-be­lief in the be­lea­guered side as he looks to re­vive their flag­ging for­tunes.

West In­dies Women’s form has slumped dra­mat­i­cal­ly in both for­mats since cap­tur­ing the 2016 Twen­ty20 World Cup four years ago, and ear­li­er this month suf­fered their third con­sec­u­tive T20 white­wash when they went down 5-0 on the tour of Eng­land.

In One-Day In­ter­na­tion­als, the re­gion­al women fin­ished sev­enth in the ICC Cham­pi­onship – a qual­i­fi­er for the 2022 World Cup – and will now have to go through a 10-team qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ment next year in or­der clinch one of the three re­main­ing spots at the show­piece.

“I want to see them smil­ing again. The whole idea is to give them self-con­fi­dence and self-be­lief that they have a job to do and per­form,” said Walsh, an as­sis­tant coach with the side at the T20 World Cup in Aus­tralia ear­li­er this year when they failed to reach the se­mi-fi­nals.

“Once the play­ers be­lieve in them­selves and they are smil­ing and en­joy­ing the game, that’s the right path. You will have some bad patch­es and fail­ures here and there but that con­sis­ten­cy and that will and pride to play for the West In­dies is what I want to see more of.”

The re­cent drub­bing at the hands of Eng­land summed up the Caribbean side’s re­cent form which al­so saw them white­washed 5-0 by In­dia in the Caribbean last No­vem­ber and al­so go down 3-0 to South Africa two months ear­li­er.

Ex­pe­ri­enced all-rounder De­an­dra Dot­tin was the on­ly play­er to im­press in the Eng­land se­ries, hit­ting two half-cen­turies to top the scor­ing on ei­ther side.

Once again, the tour­ing side’s bat­ting came un­der heavy scruti­ny but with their bowl­ing and field­ing al­so found want­i­ng, Walsh said his fo­cus would be on over­all de­vel­op­ment of the squad.

“There is room for im­prove­ment in all as­pects of the game,” said Walsh, still the record-hold­er for the most wick­ets in Tests by a West In­dies bowler with 519 scalps.

“My idea and plan and strat­e­gy is to re-fo­cus, re-en­er­gize and to look at the tal­ent­ed play­ers we have and work out how we can im­prove with the play­ers we have and oth­er young play­ers to come in­to the set-up as well.

“To try to cre­ate that brand that we know we can play, that we used to play, go­ing back a few years when we won the T20 world Cup in In­dia and a cou­ple years ago when we were in the se­mi-fi­nals and were do­ing so well.”

He added: “That is go­ing to come from con­sis­ten­cy … how we plan, how we strate­gize, how we ex­e­cute and get our tac­ti­cal aware­ness up. I’m not go­ing to leave any stones un­turned. I’m go­ing to go right through every­thing to en­sure we give our­selves the very best chance.

“We have a good sol­id base of play­ers. Ob­vi­ous­ly, we have to per­form. Those teams with play­ers who per­form get the best re­sults.”

Walsh, who served as Bangladesh bowl­ing coach for three years un­til last year, has al­ready per­formed sev­er­al roles in Caribbean crick­et in­clud­ing that of se­nior se­lec­tor and Un­der-19 man­ag­er.

And the 57-year-old said he was anx­ious­ly look­ing for­ward to his new as­sign­ment.

“What­ev­er I can do to help West In­dies crick­et I’m pre­pared to do,” the Ja­maican stressed.

“My heart is in West In­dies crick­et, it has al­ways been and will al­ways be. Any­thing at all that I can do to en­hance and as­sist in West In­dies I am al­ways hap­py to do so.

“We have to look at get­ting more fe­male play­ers and get­ting them in­volved in the sys­tem. I am here to sup­port and en­hance what we have go­ing here at Crick­et West In­dies.

“I’m re­al­ly ex­cit­ed about this op­por­tu­ni­ty. I can’t wait to get start­ed and get out there and get the job done.”

(CMC)