Walsh says series loss to South Africa was ‘a setback’ for Windies Women

West Indies Women’s head coach Courtney Walsh said losing the One-day International home series against South Africa Women was a setback to his side’s plans for the Women’s World Cup qualifiers later in the year.

The Windies Women could only win one of the five matches in the series – the final ODI and needed a Super Over in that game to avoid being swept by the South Africans.

“Losing the series was a setback, but we will try to take the positives out of it,” Walsh said in a virtual news conference to review the series on Thursday.

“I knew it was going to be a testing time, just purely based on the rankings, but also the mindsets. It has given us some clear indications about what we need to do going forward.”
Walsh said: “We always knew this was going to be a challenging tour because South Africa has been playing decent cricket, so it gave us a good yardstick about where we are and what we need to do.

“The result was disappointing because you do not want to lose a series nor by that margin as well, but we just have to continue working on it.”

West Indies Women were using the series as part of their build-up to the 50 overs-a-side ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup qualifying competition to be staged in November and December in Zimbabwe.

The tournament will be the final part of the qualification process for the 2022 ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup in New Zealand.

Inconsistent batting let down the Windies Women in the series and Walsh said it was something that urgently needed to be addressed.

“Consistency is what we are trying to get from the batters,” he said. “The lack of consistency, a one score here and a one score there, is not going to help us.”

Walsh said it will be difficult to identify new, young batting talent to challenge for places in the side because there have been no domestic competitions played due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

“In the long term, we are hoping that they can play a lot of regional games and they can get tours and can develop,” he said.

“From a coaching perspective, you want to have that competitiveness, so that when it comes to selection time, you have a bit of a headache.”

He said: “But that’s not happening at the moment with the batters, and we are trying to rotate (players) to see as many players before the qualifier and the World Cup.”

“We need to see what depth we have, so to ensure that when we get to the qualifier we have a set core of people to look at that can help get through the qualifier.”