LONDON, England, CMC – West Indies will leave here today for Sri Lanka where they will fine-tune preparations for their World Cup campaign, in a three match One-Day Internationals series against the hosts.
The side, which flew out of the Caribbean on Tuesday evening, will use the series to implement several of their strategies for the ICC showpiece, which runs from February 19th to April 2nd in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India.
“It is a good opportunity to put some of the plans in place that we are going to take into the World Cup,” said coach Ottis Gibson.
“When we went for the Test series [in Sri Lanka last year] we did really well as a team and we made progress. We also had a chance to get used to the conditions.
“Now we are heading back to Sri Lanka for these three One-Day Internationals and we will be looking to put in place the plans that we will be taking into the World Cup.
“The players have just come out of the Caribbean T20 and all the players are ready for what we have coming up.”
The series was rescheduled from last December after persistent rains, which had wrecked the preceding Test series, also seemed set to affect the five ODIs.
Now, the Windies are hoping the tour provides a valuable build-up for the World Cup where they will campaign in Group B against South Africa, the Netherlands, Ireland, India, England and Bangladesh.
West Indies have not won a World Cup since 1979 and have not reached the semi-finals of the tournament in 15 years but Gibson believes the side has the quality to go all the way.
“I think we have a team that can win the World Cup. We will go there with the expectation of doing very well and putting ourselves in a position that we can reach the semi-finals, which is a very realistic possibility,” said the former West Indies fast bowler.
“We would love to win and we will try to win. The aim is to reach the semi-final and put ourselves in a position to capitalise from there.
“The Cricket World Cup is one of the biggest stages in international sport and we want to make sure we feature during the tournament. We are not listed among the favourites and that could work in our favour.”
West Indies are set to arrive in Sri Lanka tomorrow morning and will play the first ODI against Sri Lanka on Monday.