HARARE – Bri­an Lara has been con­firmed as a tech­ni­cal ad­vi­sor for Zim­bab­we ahead of the 2011 World Cup, which is to be staged in In­dia, Sri Lan­ka, and Bangladesh next month. The West In­dies leg­end had signed a con­tract as bat­ting con­sul­tant to the na­tion­al team fol­low­ing a brief stint in the na­tion­al Twen­ty20 league com­pe­ti­tion with the South­ern Rocks last year.

Fol­low­ing his at­ten­dance at the fu­ner­al ser­vice for his men­tor Joey Carew, the late T&T cap­tain and West In­dies bats­man, Lara will fly to Dubai to join the Zim­bab­weans for a pre-World Cup train­ing camp, which al­so in­cludes two prac­tice match­es there. The for­mer West In­dies cap­tain is al­so ex­pect­ed to trav­el to In­dia with the side to help them con­tin­ue their prepa­ra­tions there.

Zim­bab­we play two of­fi­cial warm-up match­es in In­dia be­fore they open the World Cup against reign­ing four-time World cham­pi­ons Aus­tralia on Feb­ru­ary 21 at Ahmed­abad in In­dia. Mean­time, Zim­bab­we have an­nounced their 15-mem­ber squad for the World Cup, and it in­cludes Hamp­shire bats­man Sean Ervine, who is cur­rent­ly play­ing in the Caribbean Twen­ty20 Cham­pi­onship with the Eng­lish T20 cham­pi­ons. (See full squad on page 58).