COLOM­BO- In just four years the West In­dies women's team has be­come a ma­jor force on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage. Un­der the cap­tain­cy of Meris­sa Aguilleira and the coach­ing of Sher­win Camp­bell, the Windies have climbed the world rank­ings and sev­er­al play­ers are now ranked among the best in the world.

Two years ago the West In­dies women reached the semi­fi­nals of the ICC World T20 where they were oust­ed by New Zealand. To­day they will again con­test the ICC World T20 semi­fi­nals-this time against Aus­tralia at R Pre­madasa Sta­di­um-and the aim now is to "go all the way". First ball is 2.30 pm (5 am EC Time/4 am Ja­maica Time).

Aguilleira said it per­fect­ly: "We know what it took to get to the semi­fi­nals and we know what it will take to reach the fi­nals. We will play our hearts out...be­cause we are not mak­ing just our­selves proud, but the peo­ple of the Caribbean and all our fans who have been sup­port­ing us here.

"In or­der to be the very best, you have to win against the very best. We know that the Aus­tralians are the de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons so we have to go hard. Yes, we had a warm-up match against them and they beat us, but at the end of the day, we just have to stay fo­cused on what we want to do...we just have to go out there and play some hard crick­et."

West In­dies en­ter the match with con­fi­dence fol­low­ing two bril­liant wins against the high­ly-rat­ed New Zealand (by sev­en wick­ets) and South Africa (by ten wick­ets) as they topped Group B. Their on­ly de­feat was by five runs (D/L Method) against Sri Lan­ka in a rain-af­fect­ed match.

Windies fans all across the world have great ex­pec­ta­tions as the women's match will be fol­lowed by the men's semi­fi­nal, al­so against Aus­tralia.

"I know that the guys had some hic­cups. They are def­i­nite­ly on the verge of show­ing the peo­ple what they can do...and I think they will be un­stop­pable," Aguilleira said.

Squad

Meris­sa Aguilleira (cap­tain), Stafanie Tay­lor (vice cap­tain), She­maine Camp­bell, Brit­ney Coop­er, Shanel Da­ley, De­an­dra Dot­tin, Sta­cy-Ann King, Ky­cia Knight, Anisa Mo­hammed, Sub­ri­na Munroe, Ju­liana Nero, Shaqua­na Quin­tyne, Shak­era Sel­man, Tremayne Smartt