The 67-year-old is ranked among the best fast bowlers of all time and is a mem­ber of the ICC Hall of Fame. He will make sev­er­al ap­pear­ances to help pro­mote the tour­na­ment, which will be played from No­vem­ber 9 to 24. He will be based in his home­land An­tigua and will al­so at­tend the se­mi-fi­nals and fi­nal on 22 and 24 No­vem­ber re­spec­tive­ly.

Sir Andy Roberts said: “I was asked, and I gra­cious­ly ac­cept­ed the in­vi­ta­tion to join the CWI pro­gramme be­cause of my love for crick­et. I will do what­ev­er I can for West In­dies crick­et and this is my small con­tri­bu­tion to the women’s game, which we can all see is grow­ing all around the world and we are see­ing ev­i­dence of and that growth here in our re­gion.

“Women’s crick­et is at­tract­ing more fans and I’m one of those fans. I watch them play and I en­joy every mo­ment of it. What I like is the en­er­gy, the ath­leti­cism, the dy­namism and the lev­el of fit­ness. The style of play is al­so won­der­ful to see – and the field­ing is tremen­dous. I would like to in­vite all the fans to come out and watch the tour­na­ment – which will be won­der­ful for the de­vel­op­ment of the game among women.”

“I am hop­ing that the peo­ple of An­tigua come out in their num­bers. I would love to see our Windies team reach the se­mi-fi­nals and move on from there. That would def­i­nite­ly help to boost the num­bers for the match­es here in An­tigua.”

Roberts was a key mem­ber of the dom­i­nant team of the 1970s and 1980s and was in the squads which won the ICC Crick­et World Cup in 1975 and again in 1979. He took 202 wick­ets in 47 Tests and an­oth­er 87 wick­ets in 56 One-Day In­ter­na­tion­als in an out­stand­ing ca­reer, which spanned from 1974 to 1983.

This is the first time the ICC Women’s World T20 is be­ing staged as a stand-alone event. The se­mi-fi­nals and fi­nal will be played at the Sir Vi­vian Richards Crick­et Ground in An­tigua.

The pre­lim­i­nary rounds are sched­uled for 9 to 18 No­vem­ber at the Guyana Na­tion­al Sta­di­um, Prov­i­dence, Guyana and the Daren Sam­my Crick­et Ground at Beause­jour, St Lu­cia.

The Windies are the de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons, hav­ing won the last edi­tion in In­dia in April 2016. The Aus­tralians have won the tour­na­ment three times while Eng­land and the Windies have won it once each.

The hosts are placed in Group A along with Eng­land, South Africa, Sri Lan­ka and Bangladesh, while Aus­tralia, In­dia, New Zealand, Pak­istan and Ire­land are in Group B.