When Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley and her government get around to compiling this year’s list of deserving National Achievement Award recipients, Hayley Mathews’ name should now be one of the very first to be included.
Through her outstanding accomplishments in international cricket, Matthews has made all of Barbados, indeed the entire Caribbean, extremely proud.
Matthews is now ranked as one of the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) leading Women’s cricketers in both of the two formats she plays under the West Indies flag. 50 Over One Day Internationals, as well as T20Is. In T20Is, she is the world’s top-ranked all-rounder. She’s also ranked fifth as a batter and joint tenth as a bowler.
Her ODI ICC rankings are fourth as an allrounder, 16th as a batter and 12th as a bowler.
Since making her ODI debut against Australia in November 2014, Hayley Matthews has now played 80 matches in West Indies colours scoring 2071 runs from 77 innings batted at an average of 27.61. Her runs have also included four centuries and six half-centuries. As an off-spin bowler, she has also captured 94 wickets at an average of 23.89, and with an overly impressive, most miserly, economy rate of 4.03!
Matthews’ T20I statistics are equally laudable, 2026 runs scored at an average of 24.40 from 88 innings batted. Two centuries and four halfcenturies to her name thus far. With her off-spin, she has also captured 91 T20I wickets at an average of 17.09 and with a 5.87 economy rate.
Those statistics do not even begin to tell the full story of Hayley Matthews’ all-around importance to the West Indies Women’s team as both a batter and bowler, and also as one of world cricket’s very best female fielders. Matthews was appointed as the West Indies Women’s captain in 2022 as the replacement for the longstanding Stafanie Taylor, who had served in that role for over seven years. Since then, she has led by example, often being among the top scorers whenever the West Indies have batted. Similarly, she has also consistently been among the West Indies top wicket-takers and/or most economical bowlers whenever they have had to bowl.
Most recently Hayley Matthews led the West Indies Women’s cricket team to a record-breaking victory over Australia by leading the highest run chase in Women’s T20 International history.
Matthews scored a stunning 132 runs off just 64 balls. Her sensational innings which has since been described as one of the very best ever in the format’s history, helped the West Indies chase down an imposing target, leading to an historic win. The West Indies set a new benchmark with a score of 213-3, securing the win with a ball to spare, Matthews’ outstanding achievements for the West Indies, with both bat and ball, have also made her one of the most sought-after international women’s cricketers, particularly in the shorter T20 format. Aside from the West Indies, and of course her native Barbados, she has also represented numerous T20 cricket franchises including the Hobart Hurricanes, Lancashire Thunder, Southern Vipers, Velocity, Loughborough Lightning, Welsh Fire, Trailblazers, Melbourne Renegades, and earlier this year the Mumbai Indians in the worldrenowned Women’s Indian Premier League.
For Barbados, the significance of Matthews’ continuing outstanding international exploits has been that every time she steps onto a cricket field anywhere in the world she serves as a global reminder of the islands’ incredible production of world-famous cricketers. From the three Ws: Clyde Walcott, Everton Weekes, and Sir Frank Worrell, through Wes Hall, Conrad Hunte, Joel Garner, Gordon Greenidge, Desmond Haynes, and Malcolm Marshall of 20th century vintage, Barbados has produced some of the greatest cricketers the world has ever seen. Not to mention the greatest cricketer ever, “on earth and Mars,”
Sir Garfield St Aubyn Sobers!
If it continues its current trajectory, by the time her international cricket career comes to an end, hopefully not for at least another decade given that she is now still only twenty-five, Hayley Matthews could quite possibly become the game’s best-ever Women’s allrounder. That is a possibility that only time alone will eventually reveal the accuracy of. In the interim, however, Matthews’ current world fame can now also be immediately used for the greater good of recapturing cricket’s long-lost status as the most popularly played sport anywhere in the Caribbean.
Even in Barbados, the birthplace of all those globally recognized legends of the game, cricket is now not nearly as popular as a participant sport among schoolboys as it once used to be. Still very much in its infancy, having not been introduced to the island’s school-aged females that long ago, Women’s cricket has suffered even more from relatively sparse participation numbers.
It is a story that has been replicated throughout the entire Caribbean. The recognition of this has most recently prompted Cricket West Indies (CWI) to announce its intention to continue making massive investments in the further development of Women’s cricket. In addition to increasing the allocated annual budget to over US$500 000, CWI also recently announced the launch of its inaugural Women’s Cricket Academy as a key initiative “aimed at nurturing and developing our region’s female cricket talent!”
The highly laudable, most welcomed, establishment of the Academy has also been touted as an important part of CWI’s intended creation of a development pathway for Women’s cricket. Of course, the eventual success of any such initiative will, however, always be dependent upon the actual numbers of individuals expressing any degree of interest in actively pursuing careers as professional Women’s cricketers. If there are not sufficient numbers of school-aged girls becoming interested and actively involved in playing cricket, there isn’t ever going to be any more than an inadequate number progressing to such higher levels as Academy enrollment.
Enter Hayley Matthews with her potential to literally be used as a “poster girl” for stimulating immediate interest in the pursuit of professional careers among female school-aged children throughout the Caribbean! The very best thing that CWI should now be pursuing is the creation of a movie-sized, Hayley Matthews landscape poster depicting her astronomical rise as a world-famous, impressively wealthy, women’s professional cricketer.
The poster, to be hung on walls in schools throughout the Caribbean, should chronicle the highlights of Matthews’ evolving cricket career. From the time when as an eleven-yearold she was captaining her school’s boys team, through bursting onto the international scene as an 18-year-old in scoring 66 from just 45 balls to lead the West Indies Women’s team to their wholly unexpected triumph over defending champions Australia to capture the 2016 T20 World Cup title, to her current day status as a sixfigure annual earnings global superstar.
Multiple copies of the developed full-length, full-colour poster can, of course, also be reprinted and distributed free to schools throughout the region under the financial auspices of Caribbean corporations. Participating corporations could pay an established fee to have posters printed with their logos included and under the inscription “provided with the kind compliments of … in keeping with our committed support to the further development of West Indies cricket!”
In support of and in conjunction with the poster campaign, Matthews along with her other world-famous current and former West Indies Women’s players, such as Deandra Dottin and Stafanie Taylor, should also be commissioned by CWI to conduct personal visits to schools within the region. Speaking directly to captive audiences of school children of both genders, girls and boys, sharing their respective experiences by way of encouraging their listeners’ active engagement in cricket as a now enticingly lucrative potential professional career.
There is, of course, the undeniable truism that wherever girls go, boys will also inevitably follow. Who knows then what ultimate effect a Hayley Matthews-inspired stimulation of interest in active cricket participation among Caribbean school-aged girls could eventually lead to? It is not beyond the realms of possibility that as attractively easy on the eyes as she is and has always been, provided encouragement from Hayley Matthews could also spark an interest in active cricket participation among school-aged boys throughout the region, eventually resulting in the rekindling of the sports’ overall popularity.
Hayley Matthews the catalyst for Caribbean cricket’s popularity revival and/or Barbados National Achievement Award Winner. While the former is yet to be determined, the latter should now by all rights be a guaranteed certainty. Over to you PM Mottley!
Guyana-born Tony McWatt is the publisher of both the WI Wickets and Wickets/ monthly online cricket magazines that are respectively targeted toward Caribbean and Canadian readers. He is also the son of the former Guyana and West Indies wicket-keeper batsman the late Clifford ‘Baby Boy’ McWatt.
Hayley Matthews Deserves A Barbados National Achievement Award!
