Stafanie Taylor urges culture of fearlessness

The consistent chorus mourning the decline of West Indies cricket hit some of its higher notes in the last few weeks with their absence from the Champions Trophy. While their swagger and style were missed in the UK, it has not been entirely lost and the Islands will have a presence on the global stage after all. It will, however, not be through the men's national side.

"We are the example. Seeing that the men didn't go to the Champions Trophy and we are here at the World Cup, everyone is looking at us to do well," Stafanie Taylor, the West Indies women's captain, said. "The expectation is high."

It would be.

The West Indies women became the darlings of the game when they beat Australia to win the World T20 in April last year. Everything about their campaign was a fairytale: from a tense opening win over Pakistan - defending a total that should have been indefensible - to the drama of losing to England by one wicket and recovering to beat India by three runs to force their way into the knockouts. They had the steady hand of allrounder Deandra Dottin, the breakthrough performances of teenager Hayley Mathews and the exemplary leadership of Taylor, who was never shy to show her emotions. Not then and not now.

Taylor is, as the rankings confirm, among the top women's cricketer in ODIs. She is ranked fifth on the batting charts, second on the bowling and tops the allrounder's list. Without her, West Indies would not be the team they are. Consider her contribution with the bat as an example: on 26 of the 31 occasions Taylor has crossed fifty in ODIs, West Indies have won. She knows they need her but, equally, she knows her team needs more than her.

"If I don't play in a game, the team seems to struggle so it's just to remind them that they do have the belief, they're talented and they can do it. A lot of us lack that belief. It's just to remind them that they can do it," Taylor said.

Taylor's confession that there is a lack of self-esteem seems at odds with everything that is West Indies cricket. They are the team that talks the talk ("Yeh Viv, Talk Nah") even when they are not walking the walk. But Taylor showed unexpected vulnerability when she admitted that the growth spurt in the women's game in other parts of the world might have left some of the West Indies players behind.

"Some of us don't play that many international leagues. Playing the Big Bash and Kia League helped me, Deandra and Hayley, so if we could get more players being out there, exposed to different things that will build their belief," Taylor said.

The trio are the only ones to have competed in international leagues in a squad with four uncapped players and three others who have played less than 20 ODIs each. Taylor's concerns about inexperience, especially in English conditions, are well-founded. Although the squad have been in the country for more than two weeks, Taylor said they are still "finding their footing" on pitches unlike anything they play on in the Caribbean. Coping with pace and swing is going to be their biggest challenge and batting, therefore, will be the first focus area for West Indies.

Taylor wants them to break out of the stereotype of being swashbuckling stroke-makers and concentrate on strike rotation. "We tend to believe that we need to hit big shots but I believe we could definitely knock the ball around and get our ones and our twos," she said. " It's just a perception that people have for West Indies players - that we are big and we are strong but we can knock the ball around too. Because we are strong, we can hit boundaries at any time. We are naturally strong, so we need to work on different areas of our game like rotating the strike."

Not necessarily an eye-catching strategy, but one that could prove effective when it comes to building totals, a job Taylor knows she cannot do alone. "We have a lot of players who are strong, fit and talented, so it's not just one person," she said.

Behind the scenes, Vasbert Drakes and Ezra Moseley, the coach and assistant coach, have been working to get that message across to their players. "We get a lot of talks from them - in their day, they were dangerous bowlers. They stress on the fact that we need to be fearless because they saw themselves as fearless. We need to get that into our culture," Taylor said.

But Taylor has already adopted that mantra. She calls herself "one of the rare ones" who has consciously worked on her self-belief. "I read a lot in my spare time. I love to read. Reading and talking to a lot of people helped me with my concentration," she said. "Playing in different leagues and getting that exposure and having a mentor telling you how important you are, that's how everything started for me."

On the eve of the tournament, Taylor is engrossed Jojo Moyes' romantic novel Me Before You. Curiously, the title is the exact opposite of the way she approaches the game: the team before herself, the pride of the Caribbean before her own, even though it would seem they are inseparable.

During this tournament, Taylor will play her 100th ODI; if all goes to plan, it will be against India in the second game - and doubtless she will be keen to bring up the same number of runs at some stage. Taylor hasn't crossed three figures since 2013, having scored her maiden century in 2009 against South Africa. In spite of that, she has been at the heart of the team's greatest successes. A World Cup trophy would surpass all of that and for Taylor, it would go a long way to encouraging people to rally around the women of the West Indies.