Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) pres­i­dent, Dr Kishore Shal­low, has ex­pressed con­cern with the re­cent per­for­mances of the West In­dies Women’s team, de­scrib­ing them as be­low par.

The Windies Women are com­ing off a woe­ful show­ing in their re­cent­ly con­clud­ed white-ball home se­ries against Sri Lan­ka Women, where they lost the ODI se­ries 2-1 and the T20I se­ries 2-0.

Speak­ing dur­ing a re­cent in­ter­view on iS­ports i95.5 FM, Dr Shal­low re­vealed he had al­ready raised the is­sue with CWI’s Di­rec­tor of Crick­et, Miles Bas­combe.

He said ma­jor im­prove­ments were need­ed, es­pe­cial­ly with the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup just three months away.

“I will def­i­nite­ly ad­mit that there are con­cerns. I looked at the re­cent se­ries against Sri Lan­ka; in fact I was there for one of the T20 match­es, and I fol­lowed the oth­er match­es on­line, and cer­tain­ly it was a dis­ap­point­ing per­for­mance ex­cept for the per­for­mance of the cap­tain Hay­ley Matthews, who scored a hun­dred in the last ODI game and Jan­nil­lea Glas­gow, a young play­er scored back to back half cen­turies.

“Apart from that, we had some rea­son­able bowl­ing per­for­mances, but on a whole, a team that not too long ago was ranked be­low us in Sri Lan­ka, beat­ing us at home fair­ly con­vinc­ing­ly, that wasn’t an en­cour­ag­ing sign at all,” Dr Shal­low said.

“I’ve spo­ken to the Di­rec­tor of Crick­et since then about it. We need to iden­ti­fy the is­sues; why we are not show­ing signs of im­prove­ment quick­er, es­pe­cial­ly with a World Cup lat­er this year. We need to be play­ing much bet­ter than that. I’m very con­cerned, I’ve flagged it with the Di­rec­tor of Crick­et and I’m hope­ful that we will see at least bet­ter per­for­mances on the field.”

Dr Shal­low said he was shocked that head coach Shane Deitz had not come un­der more scruti­ny in re­cent times.

He said with just a few more months left on Deitz’s con­tract, a de­ci­sion would soon have to be made re­gard­ing his fu­ture with the team.

“I’m sur­prised that Shane Deitz is not get­ting more at­ten­tion. But I’m sure Miles has been speak­ing with him, and I’d be sur­prised if those dis­cus­sions haven’t been on­go­ing,” Dr Shal­low said.

The Windies Women now face the un­en­vi­able task of play­ing world num­ber one Aus­tralia in an­oth­er white-ball home se­ries, with the open­ing T20I set to bowl off on Thurs­day at Arnos Vale in St Vin­cent.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing it was a chal­leng­ing op­po­nent, Dr Shal­low said he ex­pect­ed to see a bet­ter fight from the re­gion­al team.

“We have a tough as­sign­ment com­ing up against Aus­tralia pret­ty soon and I’m hope­ful that we can play some good crick­et.

“It’s go­ing to be tough be­cause Aus­tralia is the num­ber one team in the world, but at least we have some world class play­ers who, I know that if they put for­ward their best per­for­mances, then we could def­i­nite­ly com­pete and hope­ful­ly win,” Dr Shal­low said.

CMC