Head Coach Ottis Gibson has described the limited overs series against England starting this weekend as important to the West Indies preparations for the defence of the ICC T20 World Cup in Bangladesh in March-April.

The West Indies cricketers arrived in Antigua Monday and have had full training sessions at the match venue, the Sir Vivian Richards Cricket Ground, reports CMC.

“We’re building toward the ICC T20 World Cup in Bangladesh and that’s important for us, but this series is also very important for us,” Gibson told reporters.

“We will play this series as One-Day Internationals, because that is what they are, and we will play hard and tough cricket and look to beat England. We haven’t played great One-Day cricket over the last six to eight months, so we have to try and treat these games as they are try and win them for sure.”

The recent series between New Zealand and West Indies ended 2-2 with the Caribbean side winning the final match to level the series.

In the final match, West Indies made a record 363-4 to win by 202 runs. One match was washed out.

“We’re at home so hopefully we will benefit from home advantage. We went to New Zealand recently with a depleted side and we managed to level that series and we came away thinking that we could have won it,” Gibson said.

The series against England starts Friday, with the second match carded for Sunday and the third Wednesday.

After the ODIs, the two teams will play a three-match T20 Series in Barbados as part of preparations for the ICC World T20 Tournament to be played in Bangladesh.