AFTER three consecutive losses to start the ICC Women’s World Cup in England, Stafanie Taylor, captain of the West Indies Women, is desperately trying to find a way to motivate her players to break out of their horrific slump that threatens to see them ousted from the tournament before the end of the preliminary round of matches.
The Windies Women lost their opening match to Australia by seven wickets then lost to India by eight wickets. However, the most humiliating defeat came on Sunday when they were routed for just 48 runs in 25.2 overs by South Africa who then needed only 6.2 overs to race to victory.

Dane van Niekerk set a world record becoming the first bowler of any gender in international cricket to take four wickets in a match without conceding a run as she helped commit the West Indies to a 10-wicket loss, the biggest of the tournament to date.
Taylor believes she has to find a way to avert the crisis. The question is: how?
“I’ve been asking myself that, to be honest. As a captain, you are thinking, you’ve lost all three games, what do you say to these players now? But if you really want to make it to the semi-finals, you’ve just got to find a way to turn it around.

“We’ve lost three games now, we have four more games to go; so we just have to bounce back and keep fighting,” said the frustrated captain, who said there was still hope.
“There’s still a chance, I do believe there is still a chance. We still have games to go and teams that I know we can beat. As individuals, we really need to look into ourselves and see what we’re doing wrong and just rise above.”
Against South Africa, Taylor said the team lacked focus.

“I guess when you look back at the game especially for the batters, we just got out softly and a lot of our batters, especially at the top order, we didn’t apply ourselves properly. We’ve been in England for a while, it’s not like we’ve come here yesterday where we don’t know what has been happening. I didn’t think that our mindset was right. I don’t think we were focused.”

Meantime, two players have been brought in to address another problem facing the team. Kycia Knight and Subrina Munroe have been selected to replace the injured Shakera Selman and Shamilia Connell.
West Indies’ next match is against former champions New Zealand on July 6.

(Digicel Sportsmax)