SHAR­JAH–West In­dies se­nior team says they will use the Un­der-19s side's Youth World Cup suc­cess as the cat­a­lyst for their bid to win the Twen­ty20 World Cup in In­dia start­ing next month.

Cap­tain Dar­ren Sam­my said most of the squad had fol­lowed the Un­der-19 World Cup cam­paign in Bangladesh re­cent­ly and were not on­ly in­spired but were now keen on em­u­lat­ing that suc­cess at the March 8 to April 3 tour­na­ment.

"The young boys showed a lot of char­ac­ter. They were test­ed but they came out vic­to­ri­ous and that is some­thing that we will need to show in the World Cup," Sam­my said here.

"We will have to show a lot of char­ac­ter, we need to show calm heads like the Un­der-19s did and all the men here were watch­ing and fol­low­ing close­ly. Most of them on twit­ter or In­sta­gram, they passed on their con­grat­u­la­to­ry mes­sages."

The Young Windies en­tered the tour­na­ment as un­der­dogs and af­ter a rocky group phase, pro­duced a clin­i­cal per­for­mance in the knock­out stage to win the re­gion's first ever Un­der-19 ti­tle.

In the fi­nal against In­dia, they were ag­gres­sive, at­tack­ing from the out­set to come away with a five-wick­et vic­to­ry.Sam­my said a win for any West In­dies team at any lev­el was a vic­to­ry for the en­tire Caribbean.

"Once West In­dies win, we all win, whether it's the women or the men's team or the Un­der-19s," Sam­my point­ed out.

"Once we win it's a great feel­ing and we would like to em­u­late the Un­der-19 guys by go­ing to In­dia and re­peat­ing what they did in Bangladesh, and we're go­ing to men­tion that in our meet­ings that this is a goal like we had in 2012, be­cause when the West In­dies win, the re­gion is a much hap­pi­er place."

West In­dies have al­ready been in­stalled as one of the favourites, fol­low­ing on from their 2012 tri­umph in Sri Lan­ka and their se­mi-fi­nal berth two years ago in Bangladesh.

And Sam­my ar­gued that with the com­bi­na­tion of know­ing how to win and hav­ing some of the world's best T20 play­ers, West In­dies would be le­git­i­mate con­tenders.

"The fact that we've won a World Cup means we know how to get it done ... this year we're com­ing in with eight mem­bers from the team that won the World Cup [in 2012] so the squad is not lack­ing in ex­pe­ri­ence," he ex­plained.

"The guys are sea­soned T20 play­ers so in that vein, I be­lieve we have the right per­son­nel and right cal­i­bre crick­eters to help us per­form in the con­di­tions in In­dia, and we just have that be­lief that we can do it."

He added: "It is not go­ing to be easy. T20s is the for­mat where the teams are much clos­er to­geth­er [but] we still have the con­fi­dence that once we do the ba­sics right–with the po­ten­tial match-win­ners we have in that dress­ing room– we can be a great force to be reck­oned with and go all the way."

West In­dies are squar­ing off with Zim­bab­we in an un­of­fi­cial warm-up T20 here Sat­ur­day.

CMC