Collymore: WI Women's team can improve if time is invested

WEST Indies Women’s assistant coach Corey Collymore said time needs to be invested in the women’s players to see an improvement in results and bring them to a level which saw the regional team win the World T20 title in 2016.

The West Indies Women won the World T20 title in India with a victory over Australia in the final.

West Indies Women did not build on that success and over the last five years the players have struggled to find consistency.

Collymore believes in the current group of players, but knows it will not be easy climbing the ladder in women’s cricket again.

On Thursday, speaking to journalists on Zoom, Collymore said, “As I said to them it will take some work. I said I think our overall game definitely needs some serious work

"It will take time," he continued. "We are not here to say you need five years or whatever the case may be. I think we need a pool of players that we can put some consistent work in and then we can be able to choose a squad that can go forward and start to bring those performances back from 2016.”

Collymore said more age-group cricket and outreach programmes in the future will help increase the pool and discover new talent.

Collymore, a former Windies pacer, is one of the assistant coaches working alongside coach Courtney Walsh at a West Indies Women’s training camp in Antigua.

Over 20 players are currently participating in the three-week training camp.

Discussing how the training camp has been progressing, Collymore said, “It has been going good. Obviously we had the quarantine period and coming out of that over the past four or five days going to training...but the ladies have been enjoying it and it has been going really well.”

The coaches are keeping it simple during the camp so far. “We are basically working on basic stuff…majority of them have not done much since Christmas which is expected. It is like a basic return to (a) training programme going through the basic drills.”

Collymore is working with the fast bowlers which include Shamilia Connell and Shakera Selman.

“Just trying to get the ladies to be as consistent as possible and get a general idea or feel for where they are at at this present moment.”