BRIDGETOWN-West In­dies Women cap­tain Meris­sa Aguilleira says she likes how her side is shap­ing up as they pre­pare to make an as­sault on next year's 50-over World Cup in In­dia. And with the suc­cess of their male coun­ter­parts at the Twen­ty20 World Cup last month, Aguilleira says the women's team was mo­ti­vat­ed to al­so chal­lenge for a world ti­tle.

"We have de­vel­oped quite rapid­ly as a team and cred­it must be giv­en to the WICB for putting things in place for us as play­ers and as a team," she said, dur­ing the on­go­ing train­ing camp in Bar­ba­dos. "This camp is a per­fect ex­am­ple of the com­mit­ment to the de­vel­op­ment of women's crick­et. We will be to­geth­er for a month and we have al­ready seen the ben­e­fits.

"We are hit­ting all ar­eas in our game and we know that we can reach the next lev­el. We be­lieve that we are on the right track and we aim to con­tin­ue. "We want to be the best team in the world and we know we have the play­ers ca­pa­ble of tak­ing us there. The World Cup in In­dia is the next big oc­ca­sion.

"We saw what hap­pened when the men won the World T20 in Sri Lan­ka and we want that feel­ing. We want to be world cham­pi­ons too, not just for us, but for the peo­ple of the Caribbean." West In­dies Women played well to reach the se­mi-fi­nals of the World T20 be­fore go­ing down by 28 runs to Aus­tralia.

And they had seemed en route to the fi­nal when they lim­it­ed the Aussies to just 115 runs but in their turn at the crease, they were dis­missed for a dis­ap­point­ing 87 all out. "I was dis­ap­point­ed that we did not reach the fi­nal of the World T20. It was a case of be­ing so close and yet so far.

"But we didn't let that get us down for too long, we bounced back quick­ly and we are here in camp to build to­wards the World Cup," she said. "At the pre­vi­ous World T20 in the Caribbean, we were sec­ond in our group. "This time around in Sri Lan­ka we topped our group, so that was an im­prove­ment in it­self.

"We beat New Zealand for the first time in T20 crick­et and that was a plus for us. "We fought as a team and that team spir­it and fight will take us to In­dia. "There are good things to take out of our per­for­mance...we are plan­ning for big­ger things...we are look­ing for­ward to big­ger things."

West In­dies Women will host South Africa in five One-Day In­ter­na­tion­als and two T20s be­fore head­ing to the World Cup which runs from Jan­u­ary 31 to Feb­ru­ary 22. They will raise the cur­tain on the tour­na­ment in a day/night fix­ture against the hosts at the Wankhede Sta­di­um. (CMC)