LEICESTER, England (CMC) – Assistant coach Ezra Moseley has assured there is no need to press the panic button despite watching West Indies Women slump to their third straight warm-up loss here yesterday.
The Caribbean side were once again below par as they went down to India Women by five wickets at Leicester Grammar School, following up losses to a near full-strength England and Southern Vipers side last week.
“This is the third game we have lost and some people would start to panic a little bit. We’re not panicking, this is all part of our preparation,” the former West Indies seamer said following the defeat.
“Today though, I think we did some things well. I think we had a good start with the batting but we didn’t really get the score we were looking at on a pitch which was a bit on the slow side.”
He continued: “After having the Indians 80 for five, I thought that we were in with a chance of winning the game. Somehow, it seemed as if we went flat from the 25th over right up to the end of the game and that is something we constantly talk about where we say we have to play a full 50-over game. We certainly didn’t play a full 50-over game today.”
West Indies batted first but squandered a 70-run opening stand between Hayley Matthews (50) and Felicia Walters (20) to find themselves restricted to 174 for nine off their 50 overs.
When they bowled, they reduced India to 37 for three and then 86 for five but then put down chances in the field to let their opponents off the hook.
Moseley said it was now imperative that the training sessions took on a new level of intensity.
“We’re going to have to really work hard at our next practice session and leading up to the tournament, we’re going to have to raise the intensity of the training a little bit to get the girls a little bit sharper,” he pointed out.
While West Indies enjoyed familiar sunny conditions yesterday, they have had to battle with the unpredictable English weather over the last two weeks as they staged their training camp in Southampton.
Moseley said he believed the girls were becoming acclimatised, however, but said they were still hoping for more of the Caribbean-type weather during the actual tournament.
“Leading up to this game I saw a lot of hands in pockets; today I didn’t see that,” he said.
“So although today was a lot warmer than the last two games, hopefully this weather would stay for a little while because we know the girls enjoy this type of (weather).
“Going into the next game, hopefully we should do a lot better and I am hoping we could put in a lot of work towards the next game.”
West Indies take on Pakistan in their first official ICC warm-up game next Tuesday.