Merissa Aguilleira positive about West Indies performance in the ICC Women's Cricket Challenge
Merissa Aguilleira, the skipper of West Indies women's cricket team, is optimistic that her side can perform well in the first ICC Women's Cricket Challenge to be held in Potchefstroom, South Africa
from the 6th to the 16th of this month. Aguilleira is quite confident of finishing the inaugural edition of the ICC Women's Cricket Challenge at a successful note.
"We had a wonderful camp," said Aguilleira. "We know this is just the start of what will be a long journey and we are confident it will be a successful journey.”
The ICC Women's Cricket Challenge is the first of its kind and would feature six teams ranked between fifth and tenth on the ICC Team ODI rankings table. The basic agenda of playing the bottom six nations
in the tournament is to provide them ample chances to play cricket so that the gulf between the top 4 and the bottom six international teams could be bridged. The tournament being hosted by South Africa would see the hosts, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Ireland-c751,
Netherlands, and Sri Lanka play it out for the title.
All the six sides would face off against each other in a series of One Day Internationals followed by a T20 series. The T20 series would divide the teams into two groups; one featuring Pakistan, Ireland
and Sri Lanka while the other would include http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Sri-Lanka-c758, West Indies and South Africa.
The opener of the ICC Women's Cricket Challenge would be played between Pakistan Women and Ireland Women on Wednesday, 6th
of October. The tournament would reach an end on the 16th of October.
The last mega tournament attended by the West Indies women was the 2009 ICC Women World T20 championship in which the side had reached the semi-finals. But this time the West Indies women, according
to Aguilleira, are aiming for greater things.
"The last time we played as a team was in the ICC World Twenty20 and we made some big steps forward - reaching the semi-finals. This time around we will aim to continue the improvement and make more
steps forward," said Merissa Aguilleira.
The West Indies side has been tipped as a favourite by various other sides as well as Betty Timmer, the Chairperson of the ICC Women's committee.
"Since last year, West Indies are in the top five. We can now talk about top five. West Indies are stronger than all the other countries. I really hope sides like South Africa, Pakistan say this is
a challenge for us."
The West Indies women would be going straight into the fixtures soon after reaching Potchefstroom so the side will have no time to get acclimatized with the conditions. She further added that they will adopt a game-to-game
strategy and are not going to take any opposition for granted.
"We don't have a lot of time when we reach to get acclimatised so we have to buckle down from early," said Aguilleira. "We are playing against teams that are ranked below us, but they are all very good
teams and we can't take anything for granted. We have to make sure we are at our best.”
The West Indies women have faced some tough clashes in http://www.senore.com/Cricket/South-Africa-c757 over the past few years. The South African tracks have always been hard to play for the Caribbean players. The West Indies skipper
said that the South African and http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755 are also cut-throat at times. Aguilleira feels the inaugural ICC Women's Cricket Challenge will be exciting for the players and the cricket fans.
West Indies plays its first one-day fixture against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Netherlands-c753 on October 6 while their first twenty20 game would be against the hosts on October 14.
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