Alyssa Healy leaves some big shoes to fill, but Chinelle Henry is ready to step in for UP Warriorz and make an unexpected WPL debut she hopes will be the start of something huge.Henry, the powerful West Indies middle-order batter and handy fast bowler, received a late call-up to the tournament as a replacement for Australia captain Healy, who is recovering from a stress injury in her foot, and while she is yet to play a game, she wants to make her inclusion count.”This is a really huge, huge opportunity for me,” Henry told ESPNcricinfo’s Powerplay podcast. “My only other franchise league would’ve been the CPL, so to be a part of one of the biggest franchises around in female cricket in the WPL is a really big thing for my career going forward. Next year maybe I could secure a place to be actually a part of a team permanently coming in the next edition of the WPL, so this year is definitely kind of like a test run, a trial run, for me.Related
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“Coming in has a replacement, that’s a huge set of responsibilities on me, huge shoes to fill. The atmosphere playing along with some of the best in the world from their respective regions is going to be huge. This will be a lot of learning this year and I’m hoping that I can actually go there and deliver on the field when called upon, because that’s the reason why I’m here. Obviously they saw something. Healy, unfortunately the team lost to injury, and to be that replacement is a huge honour.”It only takes a glance back to December to see why UP Warriorz reached for Henry’s number when Healy succumbed to the injury she has been battling on and off since last year’s T20 World Cup.A 16-ball 43 plus one wicket in a losing cause during West Indies’ third T20I against India at Navi Mumbai and 61 off 72 balls in the third ODI, which India won in Vadodara, indicated some serious good form on Henry’s maiden tour of India.Now she is hoping to follow in the footsteps of team-mates Hayley Matthews and Deandra Dottin in making her first foray to the WPL and, along with Stafanie Taylor, branching out into more global franchise competitions.”A lot of people have been talking about it, that I have been in form lately, and that’s something that I actually want to continue to do because obviously the pressure of the WPL is different from everything else,” Henry said. “Being here in the WPL, I’m not going to lie, I was a little bit nervous at first, but after coming back here, adjusting to the atmosphere, it’s just about getting to know the girls a little bit better and just picking up where I left off the last time I was in India. It’s just about continuing that confidence, continuing to play with that freedom and to know that I have the backing of the coaches and team.”At the age of 29 and with 111 international caps across both white-ball formats, any lessons Henry can take back to the younger members of the West Indies squad will be a bonus as they look to build on the success of reaching last year’s T20 World Cup semi-finals, where they lost to eventual champions New Zealand.West Indies will need all of those components to come together again in April when they face five other teams vying for just two qualifying places at the 50-over World Cup, to be played in India later this year.”When you talk about West Indies, we always want to be at the big stage, big competitions, we always want to be competing,” Henry said. “The same amount of confidence, the same amount of enthusiasm that we play the T20s with, that’s something we are trying to go out there and play the longer version with. The longer version of the game is something that we are going to have to take more responsibility for as a person, as a team, and know that to avoid these situations [going through the qualifier] this is what we have to do.”We won the T20 World Cup once and definitely the ODI World Cup is something that we talked about. We just don’t want to keep dwelling on the past that, ‘hey, we won the 2016 T20 World Cup’. Teams are evolving, teams are getting better, players are getting better. We know that we have to get better and these are things that we have to do in order to be better at the longer version of the game.”
West Indies will also return to playing a women’s Test for the first time in a generation in 2026 when they host Australia, having last played the format in 2003-04.Well before that, though, they play three T20Is and three ODIs in May and June in England, against the side they knocked out of the T20 World Cup at the group stage.Since then, England have suffered a 16-0 points thrashing at the Women’s Ashes in Australia, prompting an ECB review into how to turn the team’s poor run of results around. Henry expects a response.”The World Cup, it was good for us, the things that we achieved,” she said. “England being one of the best in the world, we were able to overcome that hurdle. Unfortunately we couldn’t make it to the final, but I was definitely proud of the team, proud of the performances. It is definitely going to be a challenge [playing in England] because I’m pretty sure they’ll remember that we’re the reason why they didn’t make it further in the T20 World Cup, so there would be a lot to settle there.”But that happened and we know what it takes to beat teams that are ranked above us. We know what it takes individually and as a team and there’s a lot we could take from that World Cup and bring into this series that we have coming up against them in May. They will be coming out guns blazing so as a unit we have to be up for the challenge and we have to be ready to know that when the pressure happens we just know how to deal with it.”
