HARARE, Zim­bab­we – Head coach Court­ney Walsh has en­dorsed the de­ci­sion by the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil to scrap the 50-over Women’s World Cup Qual­i­fiers but said West In­dies Women were thrilled with their qual­i­fi­ca­tion for next year’s show­piece in New Zealand

The ICC an­nounced Sat­ur­day the tour­na­ment would not con­tin­ue due to the emer­gence of the new Omi­cron vari­ant of COVID-19, which had led sev­er­al ma­jor coun­tries to slap trav­el re­stric­tions on south­ern African na­tions, in­clud­ing Zim­bab­we.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the dis­ap­point­ment for all the teams in­volved, Walsh said play­er safe­ty was of the high­est im­por­tance.

“Yes it’s dis­ap­point­ing that the tour­na­ment had to be can­celled,” said the West In­dies bowl­ing leg­end.

“I’m sure all the teams here par­tic­i­pat­ing would be dis­ap­point­ed as it is a chance to put all your skills on show and es­pe­cial­ly the teams vy­ing to get to the World Cup, there’s go­ing to be dis­ap­point­ment.

“I think the right de­ci­sion was tak­en by not putting the teams at risk, es­pe­cial­ly with the re­cent de­vel­op­ments hap­pen­ing.”

Zim­bab­we, along with South Africa, Botswana, Namib­ia, Lesotho, Eswa­ti­ni, Mozam­bique and Malawi, have all been black­list­ed by the Unit­ed States, Unit­ed King­dom and sev­er­al Eu­ro­pean Union na­tions.

The move fol­lowed the an­nounce­ment by the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion that the new Omi­cron strain, first iden­ti­fied in South Africa, was one of “con­cern”, with the US Cen­ter for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion warn­ing about its “de­gree of trans­mis­si­bil­i­ty”.

West In­dies played on­ly a sin­gle game of the qual­i­fiers when they trounced Ire­land Women by six wick­ets last Tues­day.

Their sec­ond game sched­uled for Sat­ur­day against Sri Lan­ka Women was sub­se­quent­ly aban­doned with­out a ball bowled af­ter a mem­ber of the Asian side’s sup­port staff test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19.

Ac­cord­ing to play­ing con­di­tions, West In­dies, Bangladesh, Pak­istan – the high­est ranked teams in the No­vem­ber 21 to De­cem­ber 4 tour­na­ment – will now progress to the World Cup sched­uled for March 4 to April 3, 2022.

“We are ob­vi­ous­ly de­light­ed that we have qual­i­fied and that we will be there at the World Cup next year,” Walsh said.

“The girls are very hap­py be­cause that was one of the mis­sions we want­ed to ful­fil when we left the Caribbean.

“We’re go­ing to start plan­ning and prepar­ing for New Zealand 2022 but our main fo­cus right now is to get the team back home quick­ly and safe­ly.”

On­ly 11 match­es of the qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ment were pos­si­ble be­fore or­gan­is­ers pulled the plug, and West In­dies now face a po­ten­tial­ly tricky route home with sev­er­al coun­tries clos­ing their bor­ders to flights from south­ern Africa or sub­ject­ing trav­ellers to strict quar­an­tine pro­to­cols.

The Caribbean side were forced to play the qual­i­fiers af­ter fin­ish­ing sev­enth in the ICC Cham­pi­onship, with the top four and the hosts qual­i­fy­ing di­rect­ly.

CMC