KARACHI – West In­dies Women’s bat­ting, along with their One-Day In­ter­na­tion­al form, will come un­der the spot­light when they clash with Pak­istan Women in a three-match se­ries bowl­ing off in Pak­istan on Thurs­day.

The Caribbean side has not beat­en any top-tier op­po­si­tion in the short­er for­mat since sweep­ing a sim­i­lar three-match se­ries against their hosts here three years ago, their on­ly se­ries win in that pe­ri­od com­ing over min­nows Ire­land at home last year.

In the in­ter­im, they suf­fered se­ries de­feats to Aus­tralia, In­dia, New Zealand and South Africa, man­ag­ing to win on­ly two of the 14 games in­volved.

And with the Pak­istan se­ries part of the ICC Cham­pi­onship, cap­tain Hay­ley Matthews said it was im­por­tant her side cashed in.

“I think we had pret­ty good re­sults that time [against Pak­istan three years ago] and look­ing for noth­ing dif­fer­ent here,” Matthews told a me­dia con­fer­ence here Wednes­day.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly, some points are up for grabs in the ODI se­ries which is su­per cru­cial for us. I think this se­ries is re­al­ly im­por­tant for where we’re go­ing to stand in the cham­pi­onship come the end of the games.

“We know Pak­istan is def­i­nite­ly go­ing to be a huge chal­lenge as they al­ways are when we come over here to play in their con­di­tions, and I think if you look at Pak­istan over the last year you’ve def­i­nite­ly been able to see a lot of im­prove­ments.

“But at the same time, our girls have been work­ing re­al­ly hard and we’re su­per up for the chal­lenge to be able to go out there and hope­ful­ly win all three games and take it home.”

West In­dies Women’s bat­ting has been a ma­jor de­fi­cien­cy in the ODI for­mat. In their se­ries Down Un­der last year, they were dis­missed for 83 and 103 in the two com­plet­ed match­es and were 107 for eight when the oth­er game was rained off.

In their three-match se­ries against Eng­land a year ear­li­er in the Caribbean, the home side nev­er got be­yond 165 in an­oth­er un­der­whelm­ing ef­fort with the bat.

Matthews, her side’s bat­ting leader, said while per­for­mances had not been up to scratch of re­cent, work was be­ing done to ad­dress the short­com­ing.

“I think it’s been ev­i­dent in the past year or two that we prob­a­bly haven’t scored as many runs as we would’ve want­ed to,” she ex­plained.

“But at the same time, it’s some­thing that we’ve been work­ing on a whole lot through­out our re­gion­al com­pe­ti­tion and through­out train­ing camps as well.

“I think when you look at the teams we’ve faced in the cham­pi­onship as well, we’ve had a lot of the high­er-ranked teams to play against.

“So I’m hop­ing we can go out there and re­al­ly put up some good per­for­mances and be able to gain some points off of the teams that are more close­ly ranked to us.”

The open­ing ODI gets un­der­way at 9:30 am (12:30 am East­ern Caribbean time) at Na­tion­al Bank Sta­di­um, with the se­ries fol­lowed by five Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­als in a tour which runs un­til May 3.

CMC

SQUADS:

PAK­ISTAN – Ni­da Dar (cap­tain), Aliya Ri­az, Bis­mah Ma­roof, Di­ana Baig, Fa­ti­ma Sana, Munee­ba Ali, Na­ji­ha Alvi (wk), Nashra Sund­hu, Na­talia Par­vaiz, Sadaf Shamas, Sa­dia Iqbal, Sidra Amin, Sidra Nawaz (wk), Tu­ba Has­san, Umm-e-Hani, Wa­hee­da Akhtar

WEST IN­DIES – Hay­ley Matthews (cap­tain), She­maine Camp­belle (vice-cap­tain), Aaliyah Al­leyne, Afy Fletch­er, Chedean Na­tion, Cher­ry Ann Fras­er, Chinelle Hen­ry, Jan­nil­lea Glas­gow, Kar­ish­ma Ramharack, Kate Wilmott, Qiana Joseph, Rasha­da Williams, Shamil­ia Con­nell, Stafanie Tay­lor, Zai­da James