BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – A con­fi­dent West In­dies Un­der-19 squad de­part­ed Bridgetown’s Grant­ley Adams In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Tues­day, bound for the ICC Un­der-19 World Cup in Namib­ia and Zim­bab­we.

With a clear ob­jec­tive to sur­pass their pre­vi­ous tour­na­ment per­for­mance, the team car­ries the mo­men­tum of re­cent se­ries vic­to­ries and a uni­fied spir­it fos­tered through in­no­v­a­tive prepa­ra­tion.

Drawn in a com­pet­i­tive Group D along­side South Africa, Afghanistan, and Tan­za­nia, the Young Windies will open their cam­paign against Tan­za­nia in Wind­hoek on Jan­u­ary 15.

The jour­ney to this point, how­ev­er, has been metic­u­lous­ly planned with on­ly ex­e­cu­tion left to ful­fil the man­date.

Head coach Ro­han Nurse struck a tone of am­bi­tious re­al­ism as the team em­barked. “We’re dar­ing to dream,” Nurse stat­ed. “The fact that we would have played re­al­ly well in the last two se­ries has built con­fi­dence in the group.”

He em­pha­sised the com­pre­hen­sive prepa­ra­tion led by ter­ri­to­r­i­al path­way coach­es and fran­chis­es, not­ing the chal­lenge of keep­ing the squad con­nect­ed since their se­ries win against Eng­land last year.

“We have been in­no­v­a­tive with con­tin­u­ous com­mu­ni­ca­tion, in­ter­ac­tions, and on­line ses­sions where we share in­for­ma­tion.” “Every­body’s pret­ty clear in terms of what the ob­jec­tives are.”

A key ob­jec­tive is clear, and that is to sur­pass the 2022 squad. “One of the min­i­mum ob­jec­tives for us is to en­sure that we get in­to the fi­nal stage, which will be bet­ter­ing the team from the last World Cup,” Nurse af­firmed, high­light­ing the de­sire to car­ry their win­ning form di­rect­ly in­to the tour­na­ment.

Cap­tain Joshua Dorne echoed his coach’s con­fi­dence, buoyed by se­ries wins against Eng­land and Sri Lan­ka. “It gives us a big con­fi­dence boost go­ing in­to the World Cup,” Dorne said.

He al­so high­light­ed the sig­nif­i­cant boost pro­vid­ed by the in­clu­sion of wick­et­keep­er-bat­ter Jew­el An­drew, who al­ready pos­sess­es se­nior in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence.

“It re­al­ly means a lot, he has that in­ter­na­tion­al ex­po­sure, so he can give in­for­ma­tion at any time,” Dorne not­ed, un­der­scor­ing the val­ue of An­drew’s in­sight with­in the squad.

CMC