Women's World Cup: West Indies have discussed India's batting struggles, says Shakera

Hamilton, March 11 (IANS) West Indies pacer Shakera Selman on Friday said her team is aware of India's batting struggles and are hopeful about exploiting it to the fullest in the ICC Women's Cricket World Cup.

West Indies have been the giant killers in the ongoing tournament, defeating hosts New Zealand by three runs in their opening match and followed it up with a seven-run win over defending champions England.

Now, the Stafanie Taylor-led side will square off against India at Seddon Park on Saturday. In both matches of the World Cup, India's top-order has failed to fire, especially in the first 10 overs and it is something that the West Indies will be looking to cash on to strengthen their case for getting into the semifinals of the World Cup.

"We obviously have discussed it (India's batting) as a team. We saw the change from Shafali Verma to Yastika (Bhatia) at the top -- we have no idea what they will bring tomorrow. But we are prepared for whatever they try -- we have been doing well with the ball -- and we're just going to focus on our strengths and hopefully it turns out that we will be able to exploit their weaknesses," said Shakera in the pre-match virtual press conference.

Shakera was affirmative in saying that the three off-spinners in West Indies bowling line-up, captain Stafanie Taylor, Hayley Matthews and Anisa Mohammed, will be a good match-up against a left-all India top order.

"I think our off spinners are probably looking at their batting line-up. But like I said, we have no idea what change we will make tomorrow. The good thing for us is that Shafali didn't do well in the first game either. So maybe it's more an issue for the India team to figure out who they are going to send against us tomorrow."

With two wins against much-stronger teams, West Indies are flying high in the World Cup. But Shakera is aware of much tougher challenges and guarding against complacency in the tournament. "Really good to get off to a good start. We're pumped to have won our first two games especially against two highly ranked sides -- two teams we haven't done well against in recent times. First time we've beaten New Zealand in New Zealand, and the first time we've beaten England in an ODI World Cup -- so we're really excited as a team.

"But we're not getting carried away. We know that we're going to have to keep fighting, it is going to get harder -- our coaches have reminded us that, that we came into this world pretty much under the radar. No teams are going to be focusing on us, so we know it's going to get tougher."