CARDIFF– West In­dies will be hop­ing for some suc­cess and a win as they meet Sri Lan­ka at Edg­bas­ton to­day in their fi­nal prepa­ra­tion match be­fore the start of the ICC Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy.

The team ar­rived in Birm­ing­ham on Sun­day, in good spir­its de­spite their loss to Aus­tralia here Sat­ur­day.

Their op­po­nents, Sri Lan­ka looked the bet­ter side for most of their warm up game against In­dia on Sat­ur­day but still end­ed up los­ing by five wick­ets, and they too, will be hop­ing for a morale boost­ing win on the eve of the tour­na­ment.

West In­dies showed glimpses of good form against the Aussies be­fore go­ing un­der by six wick­ets, un­der­mined by a bril­liant cen­tu­ry from open­er Shane Wat­son.

Cap­tain Dwayne Bra­vo said yes­ter­day the match was im­por­tant de­spite the re­sult as sev­er­al play­ers got cru­cial match prac­tice and ac­cli­ma­tised to the Unit­ed King­dom weath­er.

"We have been in the nets for a while now so it was good to get out in the mid­dle. I think we got a lot out of this game. It was our first game of the tour and it was good to get out there and get ac­cus­tomed to the weath­er and the con­di­tions," he point­ed out.

"Al­so get­ting used to the dif­fer­ent wick­ets, as we have been play­ing a lot in the Caribbean and we had oth­ers who were play­ing in the IPL and joined us."

Opt­ing to bat first, West In­dies reached 256 for nine from their 50 overs, with left-han­der Dar­ren Bra­vo top scor­ing with 86 and open­er John­son Charles weigh­ing in with 55.

Aus­tralia were strug­gling at four for two in the sec­ond over of their run chase fol­low­ing quick strikes from speed­ster Ke­mar Roach but an im­pe­ri­ous 135 from Wat­son quick­ly set­tled the is­sue.

Bra­vo said he was pleased that Charles was able to get 50 and his broth­er Dar­ren was able to stay at the crease for as long as he did.

"Both are im­por­tant play­ers and we are hop­ing to­day that some of the oth­er se­nior play­ers would set­tle and get in some good ef­forts."

The West In­dies are ex­pect­ed to give Chris Gayle a chance in the mid­dle to­day.

Gayle who en­joyed a suc­cess­ful IPL se­ries, has al­ready said he is dis­ap­point­ed with his lack of runs for the West In­dies in re­cent times.

The hard hit­ting open­er has ad­mit­ted he has not per­formed con­sis­tent­ly for the West In­dies in his last few ODIs.

Af­ter his 125 at home in Ja­maica against New Zealand last year, Gayle has not score a half cen­tu­ry in his last 11 match­es across three ODI se­ries.

"I need some runs for the West In­dies. The last cou­ple of games I have not done well for the West In­dies. Hope­ful­ly this tour­na­ment could be the turn­ing point for me," Gayle said over the week­end.

He said he was not putting too much pres­sure on him­self.

"Once the men­tal as­pect is ready, the en­tire body will be ready."

West In­dies en­joyed a full train­ing ses­sion yes­ter­day.

Fol­low­ing to­day's game, West In­dies will turn their at­ten­tion to their open­ing game against Pak­istan on Fri­day at the Oval in Lon­don.

The Caribbean side is con­test­ing Group B along­side In­dia, South Africa and Pak­istan while Group A will see hosts Eng­land, Sri Lan­ka, Aus­tralia and New Zealand do­ing bat­tle.

The two top teams in each group af­ter the pre­lim­i­nar­ies will progress to the se­mi-fi­nals. The ICC Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy runs from June 6-23. (CMC)

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