Col­in Croft

West In­dies tour to Aus­tralia, for a se­ries of One-Day In­ter­na­tion­als (ODI) and Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­als (T20I), could not have come at a bet­ter time, giv­en that eu­pho­ria we ex­pe­ri­enced in the re­cent Caribbean T20 Cham­pi­onships.

Sim­i­lar­ly, West In­dies women, hav­ing just done ex­cel­lent­ly against high­er-ranked South African women, ty­ing the ODI se­ries and beat­ing the "La­dy Pro­teas" in both T20I's, must be­come even more fo­cused, to try to em­u­late their male coun­ter­parts by win­ning the up­com­ing In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) Women's World Cup (WWC) in In­dia.

Dr Ju­lian Hunte, pres­i­dent of West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB), was cor­rect in hail­ing our ladies as "su­perb." Com­ing from two match­es down, to tie that ODI se­ries, took tremen­dous gump­tion, mar­velous crick­et too, from our fe­male rep­re­sen­ta­tives. They re­al­ly were that good!

Hav­ing beat­en South Africa in T20's and ty­ing at 50-over games, the re­gion­al women's team must not com­pla­cent­ly think that they might eas­i­ly man­age out­siders In­dia and Sri Lan­ka, even if they lose to world cham­pi­on Eng­land in the Group stages of the longer WWC 50-over for­mat.

Crick­et is nev­er played that way, in any for­mat! Every game in­volv­ing the Windies women is cru­cial to their progress in this com­pe­ti­tion. Char­lotte Ed­wards, Eng­land's present cap­tain, lead­ing a team that has won ICC WWC three times, last in 2009, has al­ready sig­naled team in­ten­tion to be ruth­less:

"As In­ter­na­tion­al crick­eters, this is the ul­ti­mate prize for us. This Eng­land team is used to high ex­pec­ta­tions be­ing placed on us. Since 2009, this ex­pec­ta­tion is some­thing we have had to deal with, some­thing that has spurred us on. We rel­ish it. ICC Women's World Cup 2013 is a re­al chal­lenge!"

West In­dies cap­tain Meris­sa Aguilleira will have to lead with sim­i­lar aplomb as present ver­sus South Africa, if West In­dies Women are to progress well in this com­pe­ti­tion. She would be de­pend­ing much on se­nior lieu­tenants, Staphanie Tay­lor, De­an­dra Dot­tin and Anisa Mo­hammed.

Oh, in pass­ing, not sur­pris­ing­ly, T&T won this year's Caribbean T20, seem­ing­ly the on­ly team to have been prop­er­ly pre­pared, even if they did have home ad­van­tage for half of the com­pe­ti­tion.

It should be not­ed that play­ing at home does bring on its pres­sures. Wind­ward Is­lands, led by West In­dies present cap­tain Dar­ren Sam­my, no less, played at "home" too in St Lu­cia, yet could not even make the semi­fi­nals! Play­ing at home is not al­ways a bless­ing.

Al­so, as you would have read here, I had named T&T and Guyana as joint favourites be­fore the com­pe­ti­tion start­ed, so it was not sur­pris­ing to me that they met in that un­be­liev­ably poor fi­nal.

Where ex­act­ly was Guyana that day? Where were their sup­posed su­per­stars, es­pe­cial­ly Ramnaresh Sar­wan?

To com­pound his ab­ject fail­ure in the Caribbean tour­na­ment by se­lect­ing him in that team for Aus­tralia was a great an in­sult of evolv­ing crick­eters as me mak­ing a come­back! Sar­wan did not de­serve his Aus­tralian se­lec­tion.

Any­way, those six ODI's and soli­tary T20I that our se­nior men will play against resur­gent Aussies will give us a gen­er­al overview of where West In­dies are as re­gards one day crick­et over­all, not just for T20's. The ex­tend­ed one-day for­mat al­lows for so many vari­ables, all cor­rectable.

Aus­tralia does have its hands full with Sri Lan­ka now, with the Tigers hold­ing their own well, car­ry­ing the fu­ri­ous fight to their hosts in the con­tin­u­ing ODI's, af­ter be­ing an­ni­hi­lat­ed in the Test se­ries.

How­ev­er, Michael Clarke's men are the ar­chi­tects, start­ing from the era of Mark "Tub­by' Tay­lor's cap­tain­cy, of four and five runs per over in even Test in­nings, near­ly 400 runs in a full day in Test crick­et.

It is not en­tire­ly im­pos­si­ble that Aus­tralia could con­tin­ue, as they seemed to have been do­ing these last five years, to al­ways try to score at least 350, if not near­ly 400, in every 50-over game.

Their ag­gres­sive na­ture is al­ways preva­lent, with the set ob­jec­tive to over­whelm op­po­si­tions with mas­sive scores.

Yes, West In­dies are the World T20 cham­pi­on but 50-over crick­et is a very dif­fer­ent ball-game al­to­geth­er, par­don­ing that pun. It takes much more strat­e­gy and longer con­cen­tra­tion, to get through 50 overs per team, pos­si­bly 100 overs in one day.

In­ten­si­ty here may not al­ways be that ob­vi­ous, but it is im­mense.

In the not too dis­tant past, when West In­dies were dom­i­nant in Test crick­et, some op­po­si­tion Test in­nings did not last as long as 50 overs–300 le­gal de­liv­er­ies.

One has to put in­to prop­er per­spec­tive how dif­fi­cult it is, in this era of T20 games, how much more pin­point­ed thoughts must be for 50 overs.

Lat­er this year in Eng­land, ICC holds it fi­nal Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy com­pe­ti­tion, the on­ly oth­er world crick­et cham­pi­onship that runs 50-overs, to go with ICC's over­all pre­mier com­pe­ti­tion, its 50-over World Cup.

These games in Aus­tralia, then a sim­i­lar se­ries ver­sus Zim­bab­we, next two months, should as­sist West In­dies men in un­der­stand­ing where they as re­gards that pos­si­bil­i­ty of hold­ing both ICC T20 Cham­pi­onship and hope­ful­ly, the ICC Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy, all in about one cal­en­dar year. Can we all be dream­ing here?

West In­dies men and women trav­el with our best wish­es. May they be high­ly suc­cess­ful! En­joy!