Two female Dominican cricketers – Abini St. Jean and Earnisha Fontaine – have joined the Cricket West Indies (CWI) squad for the ICC Women’s Under-19 World Cup in South Africa. St. Jean and Fontaine left Dominica on January 1, 2023, as part of the 15-member West Indies Women’s Under-19 Rising Stars in a Group C division that included New Zealand, Ireland, and Indonesia.
A total of 41 games will be played in the ICC Women’s U-19 T-20 World Cup from January 14-29; friendly warm-up matches will hold from January 9-11. A total of 16 teams will compete in four groups – CWI is in Group C – in the first round of the tournament. The CWI team will be led by Ashmini Munistar who also captained the team to the USA in August and India in November.
Ann Brown-John was the lead selector for the CWI team – she named the players to make up the team for the South Africa tournament. She said the entire team had been training for several months and that the U-19 T-20 World Cup tournament would give the players the international exposure they need to be the best at cricket at the global level.
The Under 19 girls T20 World Cup will be a historic event being the first of its kind in women’s international cricket. We’ve held training camps over the past few months. This international exposure would no doubt be extremely beneficial, not only to this group of players but also serve as an investment and feeder group into the senior West Indies Women’s set up.
Ann Brown-John
St. Jean and Fontaine were given a send-forth celebration at the Billy Doctrove Pavilion of the Windsor Park Stadium on Friday. In attendance was the Minister for State for Youths and Sports, Oscar George, as well as top executives of the Dominica Cricket Association (DCA) and the Ministry of Sports. Cricket Coach Sam Kirnon was also on hand to encourage the girls to be their best at the games.
According to the schedule for Group C, the CWI team will confront Ireland on January; face-off with Indonesia on January 17; and play against New Zealand on January 19. The Ireland and Indonesia games will hold at NW University in Potchefstroom, but the New Zealand game will hold at JB Marks Oval.
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