World Cup aspirations driving Jersey cricket team
Jersey's cricketers won two matches by more than 100 runs and another with 27 overs to spare in Kenya
- Published
Jersey skipper Charles Perchard says his side are aiming to reach the 2027 World Cup after a strong start to their qualifying campaign.
The islanders won four of their five matches in the opening International Cricket Council (ICC) Challenge League A event in Kenya to top the six-team group.
Jersey will play two more rounds of the tournament over the next two years with the top two sides progressing to the Cricket World Cup qualifier play-off - the penultimate round of qualifying for the 2027 event.
They reached that stage in 2023 and Perchard is hopeful his side can do it again.
"We're top of the league at the moment, but there's another 10 games which we have to play," he told BBC Radio Jersey.
"Jersey will be hosting the next round in August 2025 for the next five fixtures where hopefully we can start putting forward some real distance between us and the chasing pack.
"Fingers crossed we'll come top of the league and therefore get promoted into that qualifier to eventually play in the World Cup.
"That is our hope and aspiration - to play in a World Cup - so to achieve that we need to come top of the league here and then hopefully we can have a good crack at that final qualifier."
All-rounder Josh Lawrenson, 21, twice won player of the match awards after a maiden five-wicket international haul against Kuwait and a knock of 93 against Denmark
Perchard was particularly impressed with how his side bounced back after losing their opening game to hosts Kenya by six wickets with more than 11 overs to spare.
They followed that loss up with big wins over Qatar, Papua New Guinea, Kuwait and Denmark to lead ICC Challenge League A from Papua New Guinea on net run rate.
"To come top of the ladder is a really great achievement," added Perchard.
"I think we learnt a lot from that opener against Kenya, particularly about how we can best play in those conditions and we took that forward.
"We got stuffed on day one really against the hosts, who understood the conditions better than us given that they were the home nation.
"We looked at how they played and what we did wrong, took that into the rest of the tournament and bounced back unbelievably well from that opener."