World Cup win would erase NZ pain: Aguilleira

DHAKA, Bangladesh, CMC – West Indies Women’s captain Merissa Aguilleira says winning the Twenty20 World Cup would help her side put their miserable tour of New Zealand behind them.

The West Indies failed to win a single game on tour earlier this year, swept 3-0 in the one-day series and losing 4-0 in the five-match T20 series that followed. Aguilleira said what would be even more amazing was if both West Indies teams dominated the tournament.

“Darren Sammy said he is dreaming of a ‘Windies double’ and that’s great. We always keep in contact with the men’s team and they always offer us their support. It is great that they have faith in us to come here and deliver and it would be magnificent for both West Indies teams to lift the cups on April 6,” Aguilleira said here Monday.

“Our motto for this tournament is ‘moving in faith’. We didn’t have a good time on the recent tour of New Zealand so it is time now for us to bounce back and show what we are made of. We would like to take the title and continue to make the people of the Caribbean proud.”

Aguilleira’s charges will also be looking to make amends for their near misses in recent global tournaments. They reached the semi-finals of the 2010 T20 World Cup staged in the Caribbean and repeated the feat at the 2012 edition in Sri Lanka. Last year, they were also good enough to make the finals of the ICC 50-over World Cup in India. They launch their campaign today with a warm-up match against South Africa at the Bangladesh Krira Shikkha Prothistan in Savar, and Aguilleira said the Windies women would be taking every match seriously.

“It is always good to start with a win. We came here to play eight matches and to win all eight matches, so tomorrow we will look to make a positive start against the South Africans. It is a very important match,” Aguilleira said.

“We won all our matches when we were here in Bangladesh back in 2011 at the ICC World Cup qualifiers and it is a matter of picking up where we left off. The conditions here are similar to those in the West Indies – with the hot sun and we know the pitches will favour our great spin attack.

“We will be looking to dominate in that department especially on the dry pitches we expect here in Bangladesh.”

The match bowls off at 1:30 pm (3:30 am Eastern Caribbean Time).