Benoni (South Africa), Feb 17: Brian Lara has pledged to pile on the misery for Bangladesh's hopelessly outclassed team as the West Indies aim to get their World Cup campaign back on track here tomorrow. After an impressive and nailbiting three-run win over South Africa in their first match of the tournament in Cape Town, the Windies came crashing back down when they were beaten by New Zealand in Port Elizabeth.
"With all due respect to the minnows, we have to score emphatic wins against them, since we don't want to face a situation like we did in 1999 when we went out because of run rate," said Lara who was skipper at the last tournament in England and where the mathematics of the situation meant they were denied a place in the super sixes. Furthermore, Lara warned that the momentum that had been built up with their win over the hosts had been squandered against the Kiwis whose battling display in the field thwarted the West Indies run chase.
"If we are going to win matches, it is necessary for one of our top three batsmen to take us into the last ten overs or so. Unfortunately, that did not happen against New Zealand. "So a score that was more than gettable, proved to be beyond our reach," Lara wrote in his Trinidad newspaper column.
"We usually approach our batting in four parts -aggression, accumulation, acceleration and finish. We were out of sync with all of them in Port Elizabeth and we lost our way between the tenth and 15th over." Bureau Report