DESPITE Jamaica’s success in women’s cricket in the Caribbean, Jamaica Cricket Association (JCA) President Dr Donovan Bennett says he worries about the sport’s future and intends to place greater emphasis on developing girls in the sport locally.

The island’s women outfit has been one of the most consistent teams in the regional competitions, with multiple titles including their CG United Super 50 Cup and T20 Blaze titles this year.

Jamaica has also produced quality players who have gone on to represent the West Indies women’s team in recent times, including Stafanie Taylor, Chedean Nation, Chinelle Henry and Rashada Williams.

However, unlike the men’s game locally, there are no youth-level competitions strictly for girls at the primary or secondary level, with senior competitions also virtually non-existent.

Bennett, who was elected president of JCA in April, says he intends to keep the women’s game alive by investing more in girls playing the sport.

“The system we have right now is not sustainable. Yes, we’re doing well but we have a very small pool in which to choose our women’s teams and I think, going forward, if we don’t expand the game at the school level we’re going to run into problems. When this present group of women retire from cricket you look around and there’s no replacements at this time so we have to do something — and do it rapidly too,” Bennett told the Jamaica Observer.

“Come the summer holidays, we’re going to be having camps all over the country for under-13 girls because we want to start from there to build a cadre of cricketers who, when they grow up, will be able to serve us well. We’re very interested in women’s cricket and we intend to broaden that base [so] as to ensure that it won’t be a pool of 20 women who are playing cricket but a significant pool that can get us more options when choosing a team, and to also ensure the viability of the game going forward.”

Bennett says he has been in discussions with the respective schools’ sports governing bodies, ISSA, Insports, and JISA as he seeks to start competitions and raise interest among students.

Stafanie Taylor is among the Jamaicans who have represented the West Indies Women at the international level.
(Photo: Garfield Robinson)

“The engagements are taking place, we’ve reached out to them, and we also have a lot of gears stored at Sabina Park — both to high schools and primary schools — so that is already set,” he said.

“For the South Africa series [recently] we were able to get tickets from Cricket West Indies to distribute to primary and high schools to make youngsters who are interested in cricket, want to play cricket, and want to see cricket at certain level. And [we] also provided a box for the ISSA principals to come in, be comfortable, and enjoy the games,” he said.

Bennett, however, says getting women coaches to help develop the girls doesn’t seem feasible in the short term.

“As we speak, there are not a lot of ladies who are in the game. Most of the coaches right now are male so we’ll have to use our male coaches for our female teams until we can train a cadre of women who can take over from them but, as we speak, we just don’t have a lot of female coaches around,” he said.

However, Bennett is urging all the relevant stakeholders to assist in reaching their ultimate objective.

“The problems are enormous. It’s not a simple thing to say: ‘I’m going to fix this and fix that’, so we need all hands on board [and] so I’ve been trying to reach out to everyone who has an interest in cricket or is involved in cricket to let them understand that I, the board, or you can’t do it alone. We all need to embrace each other to get the game going.”