By Neto Baptiste
As the debate wages on over the future of the country’s lone international women’s cricketer, Shawnisha Hector, one former West Indies fast bowler and national coach Kenneth Benjamin believes the player disillusioned was by those charged with guiding and or advising her in the way forward.
Speaking on the Good Morning Jojo Sports Show, Benjamin came to the aid of the Leeward Islands Cricket Board (LICB) after the body was accused of “confusing” the young player by her former coach and also former West Indies player, Winston Benjamin.
“The problem is, she just didn’t understand what she needed to do and so the people around her should have advised her, so I just think that she got some bad advice. Some people wanted the limelight because now we are discussing and pointing all kinds of fingers to all kind of people for a girl who had a contract and who was being paid to make sure that when the time comes to evaluate, she was better than where she was, and it didn’t happen. So we are pointing fingers on Leeward Islands board and all kinds of people, but she got some bad advice,” he said.
In an interview with Observer, Hector revealed she lost her Cricket West Indies (CWI) development contract in June. Since then, a number of individuals, including head of the LICB, Enoch Lewis, have weighed in on the issue.
Benjamin believes the players must take some responsibility for her present situation.
“Before she lost her contract, the [Leeward Islands players] would have been out at Liberta. Now, she would have been a private contractor and it would have been in her best interest that if Leeward Islands Cricket Board is paying a coach to work with the contracted players — and like Enoch said, the under-15s and the under-17s and so on are part of that — then that would have been the place for her. Here it is that Leeward Islands is paying someone who she knows would be there every day, that would have been in her best interest to find herself there,” he said.
Hector said she continues to train in the hope of reacquiring her CWI contract. Hector made her international debut on November 1, 2019 when she became the first Antiguan to play for the West Indies women’s team.