NEL­SON–Few teams loom larg­er in the his­to­ry of the Crick­et World Cup than the West In­dies–win­ners of the first two tour­na­ments–but the cur­rent team, un­der the untest­ed cap­tain­cy of young Ja­son Hold­er, is strug­gling to up­hold that lega­cy.

The West In­dies were beat­en by four wick­ets in their open­ing Pool B match on Mon­day by min­nows Ire­land and need a ma­jor form im­prove­ment when they play Pak­istan in Christchurch on Sat­ur­day to pre­vent their cam­paign dis­solv­ing in­to chaos.

Mon­day's loss to a non Test-play­ing na­tion is on­ly like­ly to in­crease spec­u­la­tion about in­ter­nal dis­cord with­in the West In­dies squad af­ter con­tentious se­lec­tions and the ap­point­ment of the 23-year-old Hold­er as cap­tain.

The young fast bowler had played on­ly 26 One-Day in­ter­na­tion­als be­fore Mon­day's clash with Ire­land and faces the dif­fi­cult task of se­cur­ing the re­spect and co-op­er­a­tion of his se­nior team­mates, no­tably Dar­ren Sam­my, whose cap­tain­cy he has usurped.

The West In­dies play­ers, in­clud­ing Sam­my who scored 89 against Ire­land, have re­peat­ed­ly stat­ed that they are a unit­ed team and all ques­tions of se­lec­tion and lead­er­ship are in the past.

But they looked dis­or­gan­ised and un­mo­ti­vat­ed at times on Mon­day and Sam­my said they face an ear­ly ex­it from the World Cup un­less they find form.

"If we con­tin­ue to play like that, we won't be here for long, for sure," Sam­my said. "So we still be­lieve that the World Cup isn't just one game.

"You win four out of five match­es or some­times even four out of six and then you can still get in­to the quar­ters. So, yeah, we're not go­ing to keep our heads down, but we still be­lieve we could make it in­to the top four in this group."

Sam­my hint­ed at prob­lems of mo­ti­va­tion and fo­cus in the loss to Ire­land. While it seems un­like­ly any team would un­der­es­ti­mate the Irish, who have beat­en Pak­istan and Eng­land at pre­vi­ous World Cups, Sam­my sug­gest­ed the West In­dies lacked in­ten­si­ty on Mon­day.

"We've not been able to put a full game of crick­et to­geth­er," he said.

"I think the bat­ting dis­play or part­ner­ship (be­tween Sam­my and Lendl Sim­mons who made 154 for the sixth wick­et) should have been mo­ti­va­tion enough for the bowlers to go out there and want to run in­to the Irish.

"But, look, we were lack­adaisi­cal in the field and we just fought that here. We scored 300 and we're sup­posed to win.

"But you could see that Ire­land is known to win those big match­es and they've caused a few up­sets in ICC events.

"Yeah, to­day we took them for grant­ed as we field­ed. So I can't re­al­ly pin­point on what ex­act­ly. We just were not putting in a good game of crick­et."

Sam­my said the West In­dies had to ral­ly to­geth­er to re­vive their World Cup cam­paign.

"When things are not go­ing your way it's al­ways dif­fi­cult to mo­ti­vate your­self," he said.

"But as a group, you know, you've got to keep be­liev­ing and we need to find some in­spi­ra­tion some­where and we need to find it quick­ly.

"I will al­ways try to be pos­i­tive in my ap­proach, help our young cap­tain, Ja­son, and hope­ful­ly the rest of the team could fol­low."