Ricky Skerritt stresses on the need of investment in women’s cricket in West Indies

Women’s cricket in West Indies needs to have more investment in order for the players to be better prepared in all aspects – whether performance or pay – said Ricky Skerritt, Cricket West Indies (CWI) president. He said that there should be more competitive cricket for women to improve their fitness.



“It needs a lot of things but it needs investment. More cricket needs to be played regionally,” said Skerritt, speaking on i95FM Sports.



“The players come back from a tour, they go home for a little while…. Most of the players end up not doing much work, they go back to a preparation camp, go off on another tour, and a lot of the times they come back perhaps having lost fitness, because there is no big set of cricket that they can enter into when they go home.”



Skerritt also acknowledged the pay gap that exists between the men’s and women’s side of West Indies. He also said that these are patterns which wouldn’t be changed overnight.



“Some people with the same skill are getting less pay with the women’s team,” he said.



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“So, some of the professionals didn’t really want to work with the women’s team, not because they don’t want to work with the women but because they’re going to get paid less than if they got a job with the men’s team. All of that has to change and for that to change you need money.”



West Indies had last won the Women’s T20 World Cup in 2016 and then made the semis of the competition in 2018. In the 2020 edition, they were knocked out after the league stage, thereby missing the semis for the first time in six years.



Skerritt revealed that Jimmy Adams, Director of Cricket of CWI, has made a report, based on which “there will be some things happening relative to women’s cricket that might sound a little bit different”.