Bri­an Lara

By the time, West In­dies take to the pitch against Zim­bab­we tonight, a crit­i­cal re­view of their per­for­mance against Pak­istan should have been done. The way the play­ers bounced back from their loss to Ire­land was pleas­ing.

But every mem­ber of that team ought to know that Pak­istan, much to the de­light of most Caribbean fans, sim­ply did not show up on Sun­day. All West In­di­an fans want­ed the volatile Pak­istan team with the ten­den­cy to self de­struct to turn up, and they got it. It is un­like­ly that In­dia and South Africa or even Zim­bab­we, will be as frag­ile or self de­struc­t­ing and if on­ly for that rea­son, we need­ed to as­sess our per­for­mance and seek ways to im­prove on it.

For one thing, our bat­ters must un­der­stand that they have to per­form in line with their tal­ent. Half cen­turies are one thing but you need your best bats­men to go on and lead the way with big scores.

It's good to know that West In­dies won with­out mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tions from Chris Gayle and Mar­lon Samuels, our two most ex­pe­ri­enced bat­ters. Chris will soon come good but Samuels' ap­proach was con­fus­ing. I won­der what is his role in that crit­i­cal num­ber four po­si­tion? His shot se­lec­tion was baf­fling for some­one with his tal­ent and ex­pe­ri­ence. He needs to be re­mind­ed he is play­ing for a team.

It re­al­ly is dis­ap­point­ing that Dar­ren Bra­vo is in­jured. I hope he will not be ab­sent for too long since his pres­ence is cru­cial, and he looked like he was warm­ing up to bat through the in­nings. Ramdin and Sim­mons are in­tel­li­gent play­ers and the lat­ter's cen­tu­ry against Ire­land has cer­tain­ly boost­ed his con­fi­dence, and he looks as­surred. An­oth­er cen­tu­ry or two is not be­yond him.

Clive Lloyd's as­sess­ment of An­dre Rus­sell is sound. Rus­sell has grown in­to one of my favourite crick­eters. He can be as good with the bat or ball, and is a dy­nam­ic field­s­man. I love his spir­it. Be­fore this tour­na­ment is over, we are go­ing to see some­thing spec­tac­u­lar from him. I hope it comes against In­dia or South Africa.

I was still a mem­ber of the team when Jerome Tay­lor first played, which was some time ago. He pos­sess­es a good crick­et­ing brain and when on song, he is a hand­ful. In­jury has kept him in and out of the team, but he has the abil­i­ty to move the ball around with good pace, and on these boun­cy wick­ets, West In­dies will need him to con­sis­ten­cy bowl as well as he did against Pak­istan. It's good to see how the ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers have ral­lied around young cap­tain Ja­son Hold­er. He must feel good to have won his first World Cup match, and to his cred­it, his bowl­ing has been ex­cel­lent.

As young as he is, he and his man­age­ment team will not want to go in­to tonight's match think­ing that Zim­bab­we are pushovers. They cer­tain­ly will not be, and if West In­dies are com­pla­cent, they have a group of ac­com­plished play­ers who will cap­i­talise on it. The Zim­bab­weans have cre­at­ed some of the biggest up­sets in this tour­na­ment over the years, and they are quite ca­pa­ble of hold­ing their own. They took some pres­sure in their open­er against the UAE but came away with two points.

For the West In­dies to beat Pak­istan af­ter los­ing to Ire­land was com­mend­able. Vic­to­ry tonight will keep the mo­men­tum go­ing for Fri­day's big test against South Africa. For this to be achieved, how­ev­er, West In­dies must ap­ply the lessons learnt from their first two match­es.