Campbell welcomes skills training camp

West Indies Women’s coach Sherwin Campbell has used a two-week training camp to refine the technical and tactical skills of his players.

A squad of 13, including current Windies Women’s captain Merissa Aguilleira, top all-rounder Stafanie Taylor, off-spinner Anisa Mohammed and talismanic batter Deandra Dottin, started the training camp on Monday, May 6, at the Sagicor West Indies High Performance Centre.

Stafanie Taylor (left) listens to Windies Women’s
coach Sherwin Campbell making a point.

Campbell took his side through their paces ahead of a schedule in the next few months that also includes a home tri-nation series with highly-regarded women’s teams England and New Zealand.

“The purpose of this camp is to get the players together, since we have not done anything as a group after we returned from the ICC Women’s World Cup and the tour of Sri Lanka,” said Campbell.

“We wanted to get the players together, so we could do remedial work on their game and continue to set plans going forward from here about what we want to team to be able to do.”

Campbell said he wanted to zero-in on some of the basic skills of the game, recognising that at the international level players always have to be working on improving your skills.

“We will be looking at all the basics, batting, bowling and fielding,” he said. “We need to examine each player’s game and work on the areas in which they need to improve.

“Their improvement will not happen overnight because it’s a process, but they have to constantly work at their game for us to remain competitive at the international level, and we want to be able to emphasise this during the camp.”

Campbell said the opportunity for a camp like this was vital for the continued development of the Windies Women’s team, which is now rated No.2 in One-day Internationals and No.4 in Twenty20 Internationals.

“This camp is very important because we have a number of new players around,” he said. “The last squad we assembled had a number of first-timers, but the players that have been there previously need to keep upgrading their skills.

“Looking back at the last few tours, we have had only one or two players that have been consistent and we need more players, particularly in our batting, to be consistent to help create a platform for success from here.”

Campbell said he was looking forward to the Regional Women’s Super50 Tournament taking place in August and the series involving England and New Zealand.

“They will tell us a lot about our players and about the direction in which we need to head going forward from here,” he said.

Campbell was assisted by Sagicor WIHPC coaches Graeme West, Andre Coley and Roddy Estwick.