WI Coach Courtney Walsh: Hector Improved But Still Has Work To Do

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Shawnisha Hector (rights) takes advice from former West Indies fast bowler, Sir Curtly Ambrose.
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By Neto Baptiste

The country’s lone professional women’s cricketer, Shawnisha Hector, showed promise during a recent Cricket West Indies (CWI) camp held here at the Coolidge Cricket Ground (CCG).

This was the assessment of newly appointed head coach of the West Indies Women’s team and iconic former fast bowler, Courtney Walsh, who said the Antiguan player left the camp in a “much better space”.

“She had some injuries and stuff before that so we have to try to get her fitter and stronger, but in terms of her effort and improvements and so on, I think everybody in the camp was happy. I think she left the camp in a much better space as well. She has a programme to work with and she had a slight injury that we are trying to make sure she gets that fully fit first before the workload gets too heavy, but in terms of her ability and what she did and how she excelled in the camp, we were well pleased with that,” he said. 

In January, 24 West Indies women cricketers gathered in Antigua for the training camp at the CCG.

The camp was the first face-to-face assignment with the players for Walsh and his technical support team, who conducted the three-week high-performance programme for a mixture of senior players and new faces.

Despite his somewhat positive review of Hector, Walsh said there is still a lot of work to be done.

“She, like everybody else, has to be a little more consistent with her bowling, which she has shown that, and we are going to have to look at working with her with the bat as well and she is a very good athlete in the field, so she’s got all the attributes that we are looking for,” he said.

Hector lost her CWI development contract in June last year.

The West Indies Women are in preparation for the 2022 ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup to be held in New Zealand in March and April 2022. It was originally scheduled for February 6 to March 7, 2021 but was postponed by one year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. 

On 15 December 2020, the ICC confirmed that the tournament will take place from March 4 to April 3, 2022.

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