COLOM­BO, Sri Lan­ka � West In­dies will re­turn to Sri Lan­ka late next month for the resched­uled One-Day In­ter­na­tion­al se­ries, a tour that coach Ot­tis Gib­son says will be cru­cial in the Caribbean side's prepa­ra­tion for the 2011 Crick­et World Cup in Asia. ?Per­sis­tent heavy rain here over the last few weeks forced the post­pone­ment of the five-match ODI se­ries on Thurs­day, and the Windies are now ex­pect­ed to play the se­ries start­ing in the third week of Jan­u­ary. Gib­son said the resched­uled match­es would now be fac­tored in to the side's ground­work for the World Cup, as they will lead in­to two of­fi­cial warm-up games in Sri Lan­ka be­fore West In­dies head straight for the Feb­ru­ary 19 to April 2 show­piece. "That se­ries will now rep­re­sent an in­te­gral part of our prepa­ra­tion and build-up to the World Cup," said Gib­son. "We will be back here to play some in­ter­na­tion­al games be­fore the World Cup and then we will have two World Cup warm-up games so that will be a key pe­ri­od. "The in­ten­tion will be to get the team to­geth­er soon af­ter we com­plete the Caribbean T20 and get every­thing in place for the re­turn to Sri Lan­ka. We will look to plan well. The at­ten­tion we paid to de­tail in the Test se­ries shows that once we plan well we can de­liv­er at this lev­el."

West In­dies won the first two World Cups in 1975 and 1979 un­der leg­endary cap­tain Clive Lloyd, and al­so reached the fi­nal of the 1983 event be­fore los­ing to In­dia.?They have been non-fac­tors ever since, how­ev­er, but Gib­son said prop­er or­gan­i­sa­tion and prepa­ra­tion could make the re­gion­al side con­tenders in the up­com­ing tour­na­ment. "Every crick­eter wants to play in the World Cup and every­one is ea­ger­ly look­ing for­ward to the tour­na­ment," the for­mer Windies fast bowler said. "The West In­dies won the World Cup twice, and reached the fi­nal on the third oc­ca­sion, so hope­ful­ly we can come and put on a good show­ing for our fans and our sup­port­ers." He added: "Some peo­ple will say, based on where we are in the rank­ings at the mo­ment that they don't give us a chance, but we know if we are well planned, well or­gan­ised and com­mit­ted, like we showed in the Tests here in Sri Lan­ka, we have a chance." The post­pone­ment of the ODI se­ries came af­ter rain rav­aged the three-match Test se­ries, forc­ing a dull nil-all stale­mate.

With rains con­tin­ue to pum­mel the south Asian coun­try, it was un­like­ly that there would have been much play in the five sched­uled match­es. Gib­son said the fo­cus was now on re­turn­ing to Sri Lan­ka and do­ing well with the play­ers they had. "We have match-win­ners in our team who are ca­pa­ble on any giv­en day of pro­duc­ing match-win­ning per­for­mances," he not­ed. "It will be very im­por­tant that we come back here and give our­selves the best chance of win­ning the tour­na­ment." West In­dies are due to leave here ear­ly to­day or to­mor­row for their long trek back to the Caribbean. (CMC)