The hosts crashed out by eight wickets in the final Twenty20 international against England on Thursday, 5-0 in the series after a 3-0 loss in the ODI series earlier this month.
West Indies Women’s captain Hayley Matthews says the emergence of young players was one bright spark amid the gloom of yet another series whitewashed by the mighty England Women.
With key players like former captain Stafanie Taylor and the experienced bowling trio of Anisa Mohammed, Shakera Selman and Shamilia Connell all missing, the home side were forced to debut the West Indies Under-19 duo of Djenaba Joseph and Trishan Holder, along with Guyanese 25- year-old Kaysia Schultz.
Mathews believes the move is a good investment for the future.
“Obviously we would’ve had a couple of injuries throughout this series – missing so many of our experienced players.”
“So yeah, the results didn’t go our way but at the same time, I think it was really good that we were able to get young players playing and getting experience so that when the more experienced players are back, we can build a really strong core along with the youth as well.”
Commenting further, Mathews says having young players at the under-19 level in the team is a good opportunity for them to learn,
“It’s really good to see. They’re very, very young players at the Under-19 level so it was really good to have them amongst the group and learning as much as they possibly can.”
West Indies Women struggled throughout the series and were bowled out for 43 in the 17th over after opting to bat first in the final at Kensington Oval.
Overall, the regional team found itself lacking in all aspects, but it was important for Mathews to extract small positives. The 24-year-old all-rounder stated,
“I think what we can really do is look at the positives that can come out of this series.”
“We showed some really good intent with the bat in a couple of games which we can definitely look at and hopefully try to replicate a bit more often. With the ball we saw improvements and some bright sparks with certain players.”
“There’s still a lot we can take out of this series and have a nice Christmas and hopefully come back in January ready to play some good cricket.”