Skipper won't consider failure

GUERNSEY know they must win next week's Pepsi World Cricket League Division Seven.

'Absolutely – we don't enter competitions to come mid-table,' said island captain Stuart Le Prevost (pictured). 'We want to qualify.'

With associate membership to the ICC, links with Sussex, investment in grass wickets and other facilities and with all the money spent on the local game, it is widely acknowledged that the senior island side cannot spend its life in the lower echelons of the World Cricket League.

So far they have not set the ICC world alight after narrowly avoiding relegation from ICC European Division Two in 2006 and then suffering a horrendous one-run defeat at the hands of Jersey in last year's European Division Two.

Victory that day would have possibly seen Guernsey go into WCL Division Six. But a top two finish in WCL Division Seven, which gets under way in the island tomorrow, would see Guernsey promoted to Division Six which is being held in Singapore in August and September.

But even coming second would not be enough to appease the Guernsey cricket community who were appalled by the island side's batting collapse at the KGV last August which led to defeat against Jersey and finishing runners-up.

Le Prevost admitted that his team must go one step further this year and win a major ICC tournament.