BRIDGETOWN - World Un­der-19 cham­pi­ons West In­dies re­turned to the Caribbean on Tues­day af­ter­noon to a he­roes' wel­come, fol­low­ing their tri­umph last Sun­day at the ICC Youth World Cup in Bangladesh.

They were greet­ed at the Grant­ley Adams In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port here by Bar­ba­dos Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent and West In­dies Crick­et Board di­rec­tor, Joel Gar­ner, along with WICB chief ex­ec­u­tive Michael Muri­head.

Leg­endary West In­dies open­er Desmond Haynes, Bar­ba­dos Sports Min­is­ter Stephen Lash­ley and Tourism Min­is­ter Richard Sealy al­so at­tend­ed the wel­come cer­e­mo­ny.

An elat­ed cap­tain Shim­ron Het­my­er said his side had re­mained con­fi­dent de­spite their slug­gish start to the tour­na­ment.

"I think the turn­around came af­ter the game against Eng­land where we knew we had to win the oth­er games to get through," the Guyana left-han­der said.

"I think af­ter then the guys re­al­ly got se­ri­ous and re­al­ly got down to their stuff and that start­ed in the prac­tice from the next day. The guys then did every­thing in their pow­er to make sure we won the next cou­ple games and, even in the Zim­bab­we game, had had some very pos­i­tive per­for­mances."

West In­dies were white­washed by Bangladesh in a warm-up three match se­ries be­fore los­ing their open­ing match of the tour­na­ment to Eng­land by 61 runs.

How­ev­er, they re­bound­ed to crush min­nows Fi­ji by 262 runs be­fore ek­ing out a nar­row two-run win over Zim­bab­we in con­tro­ver­sial cir­cum­stances in their fi­nal group game, to reach the quar­ter-fi­nals.

West In­dies then pro­duced clin­i­cal run chas­es to beat Pak­istan by five wick­ets and Bangladesh by two wick­ets in the se­mi-fi­nals to clinch their spot in the fi­nal against pre­vi­ous­ly un­beat­en In­dia Un­der-19s.

Yet again, the strung to­geth­er a suc­cess­ful chase to win by five wick­ets chas­ing a small to­tal of 146.

Man­ag­er Dwain Gill said the con­fi­dence lev­el in the squad had re­mained high through­out the tour­na­ment and point­ed to the warm-up match­es as be­ing key to their prepa­ra­tion.

"It feels great of course be­ing part of a World Cup-win­ning squad as went there to win," he not­ed.

"It start­ed off quite chal­leng­ing with the warm-up match­es against Bangladesh but that is the rea­son we went there � to get ac­cli­ma­tised to the con­di­tions and see the op­po­si­tion."

Fam­i­ly mem­bers of the Bar­ba­dos play­ers along with well-wish­ers were al­so present to wel­come the squad. CMC