“ICC WOMEN’S CWC 2025 – A LOST OPPORTUNITY FOR WEST INDIES WOMEN!” Aug 23, 2025 Sports BY: Colin Croft – Former Guyana, Lancashire CCC & West Indies Cricketer Kaieteur Sports – On Tuesday 30 September 2025, just over a month from now, the International Cricket Council’s premier, marquee women’s event, similarly so for men’s teams – ICC WOMEN’S CRICKET WORLD CUP 2025 – will begin. 50-overs cricket is the hardest format to play well. While Test cricket is the pinnacle of one’s career, it lasts five days, with appropriate rest. T-20-Is; slash, bang, wallop; last three hours. W-ODIs last over six hours. Focus, nuances and vagaries, for an entire W-ODI’s day’s play, would confuse even “Uncle Al”, late uber-scientist Albert Einstein, had he been a cricketer. Co-host India will play co-host Sri Lanka in that first, expectedly very explosive game. What a very heated, ultra-important tournament overall this one promises to be! Look out!! That first game, IND v SL, will be in a cricket crazy city, relatively small 40,000 arena, for India, M. Chinnaswami Stadium, Bengaluru, one of five venues, plus Vizag, Indore, Guwahati and Colombo, to be used in 2025’s competition, the 13th ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup. Defending 2022 Champions Australia Women will try to win their eight W-ODI against women representing India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, England, New Zealand, Pakistan and South Africa. The entire wide world will be watching these wonderful, extremely talented women duke it out for seriously eye-watering, for women’s cricket, financial winning rewards! This is the last time that eight teams will play in an ICC Women’s CWC. Ten teams will contest the next stanza in 2029.Hopefully, West Indies Women will make 2029’s roster. Three teams; England, Australia and New Zealand; had contested all 13 editions of ICC Women’s CWC. MASSIVE DISAPPOINTMENT FOR WEST INDIES WOMEN’S CRICKETERS WI Women should be frothing at the mouth, crying in their beverages with inconsolable anger and absolute incomprehension, at not being involved, a tremendous, missed opportunity to enhance careers, and especially collective and individual coffers. What a lost opportunity! The rest of the world’s women cricketers will entertain and have billions of eyes on their tournament, to the final on Sunday 02 November 2025. Tournament winners will receive nearly US$2.5 million, part of unprecedented nearly 8 million US Dollars in total prize money. Whither goes WI Women’s cricket right now? Where is the Caribbean’s comprehensive plan for development of women’s cricket, from primary schools through all levels to W-ODIs, preparing for 2029? Stop trying to spin tops in mud. Do something useful for a change! Stupid three-week camps will never bring required improvements necessary for renewal and better performances. Tough year-round cricket at all regional levels involving thousands, a filtrating, sifting out plan to get the very best, must be put into progress now, not unlike how most young aviators elevate through the ranks. The cream will generally rise to the top! INVOLVEMENT OF PAST WI WOMEN’S PLAYERS &PRESENT WOMEN PRIME MINISTERS In my travels around cricket, I had communicated well with two recent better WI Women’s players, both Trinidad & Tobago’s former WI Women’s All-rounder Ms. Stacy-Ann King and former WI Women’s Teams Captain, Batter & Wicket-keeper Ms. Marissa Aguilera. Those ladies had put their careers, their very lives and existence; blood, sweat, family, injuries, pains and tears; into WI’s Women’s cricket, continuing well after playing careers had ended, as well-received Mentors, Coaches and Broadcasters; real-life “Lady Leaders.” Ms. King’s WI-W’s international career; 2008 – 2019; 75 W-ODI’s and 86 W-T-20-Is. Ms. Aguilera’s WI-W’s international career; also 2008 – 2019; 112 W-ODI’s and 95 W-T-20-Is. Their fantastic, extensive experiences must not be wasted by stupid island politics, men’s ‘jack-ass-edness’, small-mindedness and self-serving, infantile, self-aggrandizing insularity. The Caribbean presently has two quite prominent and dominant, wonderfully dynamic and very powerful political leaders – Prime Ministers in Barbados and Trinidad & Tobago. Ms. Mia Amor Mottley and Ms. Kamla Persad-Bissessar, respectively; paraphrasing Ms. Margaret Thatcher, late former British Prime Minister; must now “have the balls” to shake up puerile, asinine men’s cricket establishments of acute non-leadership and non-achievements. Past women WI cricketers like Ms. King and Ms. Aguilera must be fully actioned to influence young ladies now in primary and high schools across the Caribbean. We need them badly! WI Women players like Ms. King and Ms. Aguilera have always shown that great passion, full commitment, determination and 100 % effort into making WI Women’s cricket much better. Cricket West Indies (CWI) and respective Caribbean Governments must now do much more than just talk so much unadulterated drivel, ala that glitzy but absolutely useless symposium called recently by several Caribbean Prime Ministers, in POS, T&T; just more meaningless meetings than parliaments or United Nations; similarly achieving absolutely nothing. Having not spoken to them recently, Ms. Aguilera and Ms. King must be seriously disappointed; Ms. Mottley and Ms. Persad-Bissessar too; that WI Women will not be involved in ICC W-CWC 2025. Eight million Caribbean people should similarly feel that way too! Surely, regional programs can be properly established ASAP, using visiting coaches and mentors etc. Let CARICOM somehow overcome its unbelievable uselessness to activate these ladies, and others, to bring WI’s Women’s cricket back to levels of proper recognition and high achievements. What has CARICOM achieved since its official inception in 1973? All should be focused and concerned as to what happens next, as to how do WI Women’s teams emerge from this morass to progress upwardly from the depths that they are in now. WI SUPER-WOMAN CAPTAIN – HAYLEY MATTHEWS I had written much in the past about WI Women’s present, absolute “Super-Woman” Captain, Ms. Hayley Matthews. Her statistics since her international debut in 2014 have been astounding, almost always ranked in the top five of all ICC Women’s rankings. The 27 year old Barbadian (yet another smart Pisces), has already played 99 W-ODI’s, 3,074 runs, avg. 33.78. Additionally, 125 W-ODI wickets, 24.08 RPW avg., RPO 4.12.112 W-T-20-I’s: 2,975 runs, avg. 28.88. 113 W-T-20-I wickets, 18.72 RPW avg., RPO6.08. WI Women’s cricket needs many more like Ms. Hayley Matthews. One excellent player does not make a good team. However, new, emerging players will not come from patch-work, ‘jump-up-and-kiss-me’ idiotic three-weeks tournaments and waste-of-money camps. Since its inception in 1973; WI Women debuted in ICC W-CWC 1993; it had been ONLY ONCE; ICC W-CWC2013; that WI Women ever even made an ICC W-CWC Final. Australia Women simply blew them out of Brabourne Stadium, Mumbai, for Australia Women’s 6th win. Australia Women 259-7 (50 overs); WI Women 145 (43.1 overs). Australia Women won by a massive 114 runs. Ms. Marissa Aguilera, then WI-W wicket-keeper-batter-captain, actually top scored with 23. WI Women’s batting imploded badly then. Over 10 years later, there has been no obvious progress with WI-Women’s W-ODI teams, just the same idiocy from insipid male cricket leaders and mostly male know-nothing politicians. Australia Women have since won yet another such tournament, in 2022, while WI-Women could only manage a semi-final appearance; a seriously poor, very unacceptable situation. THE NEXT STEPS FOR WI WOMEN TO NEXT YEAR 2026& BEYOND Next year, 2026, there will be another big ICC women’s event, in United Kingdom – ICC Women’s T-20 World Cup 2026. Thankfully, WI Women have qualified for that tournament. Situations should have already been put into place to ensure that WI Women not only do very well, but to almost guarantee winning that specific competition for the 2nd time, after that wonderful victory in 2016, beating nemeses Australia Women by eight wickets. Having hosted ICC W-T-20-I WC in 2010 and 2018 in the Caribbean, WI Women in 2016comfortably overhauled Australia Women’s 148-5 (20 overs), making 149-2 (19 overs). Ms. King, Ms. Aguilera, captain Ms. Matthews, and another WI Women’s stalworth, Jamaican All-rounder & Former Captain Ms. Stephanie Taylor, all featured heavily in that victory and tournament. More WI Women successes are badly needed.2026 is as good a year as any to start.Many more players of their caliber named above are needed right now if those successes are to become reality regularly. Stop wasting time! Enjoy! Cheers! Colin E. H. Croft – Former Guyana, Lancashire CCC and WI Cricketer E-mail address: c.e.h.croft@gmail.com Mobile telephone & Whats App Number: +1 (347) 885 4411 50-overs cricket, Cricket World Cup, Hayley Matthews, West Indies, Women cricket