The Windward Islands Volcanoes will hope that their fourth round West Indies Championship fixture against the Leeward Islands Hurricanes at the Daren Sammy Stadium from March 5-8 will be the one that turns their season around.

The Alick Athanaze-led outfit currently find themselves sixth on the points table after three games with 16.8 points.

They suffered a comprehensive 176-run loss to the Jamaica Scorpions in round one at Arnos Vale before an even worse innings and 176-run hammering at the hands of the Trinidad & Tobago Red Force in round two at the same venue.

Their round three clash with the Combined Campuses and Colleges looked evenly poised but was eventually drawn after being heavily affected be rain.

This is all coming off a 2024 season where they were just 5.6 points away from wrestling the title away from the Guyana Harpy Eagles.

Captain Alick Athanaze, who missed the first two games due to international duty, puts the tough start simply down to the team missing some key players.

“We weren’t at full strength to be honest. I was away, Springer was away and some of the other guys were away. I think it gives the guys some confidence that we came in,” Athanaze said during a CWI media interaction earlier this week ahead of round four.

Bigger scores with the bat was Athanaze’s main point when questioned about how his troops can turn their season around.

Throughout the first three rounds, the Windwards are one of only two teams that have yet to record a score over 300, the other being last-placed West Indies Academy.

Their highest score of the season, 248, came in round three against the CCC.

“We just need to be a bit more consistent and put some bigger totals on the board and, I guess given that the condition of the ball doesn’t do much for the pacers, set more decent plans for our spinners, be more consistent and take whatever chances come to us,” he said.

“We can’t afford to slip away because we’re basically halfway through the season already but, like I said, we’re coming back and, hopefully, the guys that came back from injury and West Indies duty can stand up,” he added.

Kavem Hodge is currently their leading run-scorer with 134 runs in three innings. 126 of those runs came in one innings against Trinidad & Tobago.