ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – West In­dies Women will be chas­ing cru­cial points to­wards World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion when they face Ire­land Women in three One-day In­ter­na­tion­als as part of a white-ball home se­ries from June 26 to Ju­ly 9 in St Lu­cia.

Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) an­nounced on Fri­day that all three ODIs and the three Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­als that fol­low will be played at the Daren Sam­my Crick­et Ground.

The ODIs car­ry great sig­nif­i­cance be­cause they con­tribute points to the ICC Women’s Cham­pi­onship, which en­ables teams to di­rect­ly qual­i­fy for the ICC Women’s Crick­et World Cup 2025 In­dia.

“The Ire­land Se­ries is the on­ly en­gage­ment in the re­gion for the se­nior women in 2023, and it's crit­i­cal we max­i­mize ‘home’ ad­van­tage in the three ODIs as we con­tin­ue our qual­i­fi­ca­tion cam­paign,” CWI high per­for­mance man­ag­er, Graeme West said in a news re­lease.

He added that the three T20Is were al­so im­por­tant be­cause they will kick start the team’s prepa­ra­tions for the ICC T20 World Cup 2024 for which the team has al­ready qual­i­fied.

“Ire­land have shown great im­prove­ment in re­cent times, and the game be­tween the two sides in Feb­ru­ary at the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup in South Africa was a thriller,” West said. “We will need to pre­pare well for both se­ries with very clear game plans.

“The squad will get time in St Lu­cia pri­or to the first ODI to es­tab­lish the key roles and fo­cus ar­eas that each play­er will be re­quired to ex­e­cute in or­der to play win­ning crick­et.

“It’s ex­cit­ing to be tak­ing in­ter­na­tion­al women’s crick­et back to St Lu­cia, the is­land is de­vel­op­ing a num­ber of ex­cit­ing young fe­male play­ers, and we hope the Ire­land games can in­spire more girls to get in­volved and start their own crick­et jour­neys.”

West In­dies Women have won sev­en of the eight ODIs they have played against Ire­land, in­clud­ing a six-wick­et win dur­ing the World Cup qual­i­fiers two years ago in Zim­bab­we that had to be aban­doned af­ter an out­break of the COVID-19 vi­ral ill­ness.

The Caribbean side has beat­en the Irish in all five T20Is they have con­test­ed, in­clud­ing a six-wick­et win dur­ing this year’s ICC Women’s T20 World Cup in South Africa.

MATCH SCHED­ULE

June

26: First ODI – 10 am

29: Sec­ond ODI – 10 am

Ju­ly

2: Third ODI – 3 pm

5: First T20I – 5 pm

7: Sec­ond T20I – 5 pm

9: Third T20I – 5 pm

CMC