By Bradley Jack- West Indies Women’s head coach Shane Deitz has lamented the lackluster bowling effort of his team in the first two ODIs against India in Vadodara.
The West Indies have been condemned to a third consecutive ODI series defeat to the Indians after losing the second ODI by 115 runs at the Kotambi Stadium on Tuesday.
This was after a massive 211-run defeat in the first ODI on Sunday.
The regional side gave up 314 in 50 overs on Sunday after skipper Hayley Matthews won the toss and chose to field first.
Couple that with the 358 they gave up on Tuesday after India’s skipper Harmanpreet Kaur chose to bat after winning the toss and you’d deduce that the West Indies have a bowling problem.
“Very disappointing,” was how Deitz described the West Indian bowling in these first two games after Tuesday’s loss.
“The last few months leading up to the World Cup, bowling was a real strength of ours.”
The Australian put the bowling struggles down to a lack of consistency on some batting friendly wickets as well as the absence of his strike bowler, Chinelle Henry, who is missing through injury.
“We haven’t been able to bowl consistent lines and lengths or bowl to a field and on the good wickets here with fast outfields, you’ve got to be able to cut off one side of the field and be able to bowl to a field. We haven’t been able to do that,” he said.
“We’ve been leaking two bad balls an over going for four minimum and the Indian team have batted really well, punished anything we’ve missed. Obviously, Chinelle Henry is our key fast bowler and she’s been out inured which has been a big miss for us. We haven’t been able to get wickets in the powerplay,” he added.
The West Indies Women currently find themselves ninth on the ICC Women’s Championship table with only the top six guaranteed a place at the 2025 ICC Women’s World Cup scheduled for August -September in India.
With that in mind, the girls still have a lot to play for in Friday’s third and final game in need of valuable points ahead of their next ODI series scheduled for May-June next year in England.
“We’ve got one more game so it’s a chance for us the players to step up and get a win. Automatic qualification to the World Cup has got to be our goal,” Deitz said. (Sportsmax)
