Vin­ode Mam­chan

Vic­to­ry over Pak­istan has left a buzz in the West In­dies dress­ing room, and the mem­bers of the team are ex­cit­ed and con­fi­dent about tonight's third match against Zim­bab­we in a Pool B of the 2015 World Cup at Can­ber­ra from 11.30pm (TT time).

"The mood is very good in the dress­ing room," said An­dre Rus­sell, Man-of-the -Match in the West In­dies em­phat­ic 150-run win over Pak­istan on Sat­ur­day.

"We need­ed this win af­ter that de­feat against Ire­land, every­one is laugh­ing and we're hap­py with the way we per­formed. It's just al­ways a fun dress­ing room, and I think from the last game things didn't go well for us, and we just turned up to­day and want­ed to show the world that we are not just a pushover."

Rus­sell said the play­ers will be look­ing to con­tin­ue that mo­men­tum against the Zim­bab­weans. "We have great tal­ent in this team and it is just about putting it all to­geth­er and com­ing out and giv­ing our all. We can go all the way in this tour­na­ment I think. Every game we go in­to now we are look­ing to bring our A game."

The West In­dies play­ers drove over from Syd­ney to Can­ber­ra by bus, a 3 1/2 -hour dri­ve, and yes­ter­day some of the play­ers played golf at the Roy­al Can­ber­ra Golf Course be­fore head­ing to prac­tice at 2 pm at the beau­ti­ful Manu­ka Oval.

The West In­dies have been forced make one change from the team which ham­mered Pak­istan. In­jured Dar­ren Bra­vo will be re­placed by Bar­ba­di­an Jonathan Carter. His in­clu­sion will give the West In­dies the added op­tion of an­oth­er slow bowler.

The West In­dies open­ers have been strug­gling de­spite the fact that the team has reg­is­tered scores of 304/7 against Ire­land and 310/6 against Pak­istan. How­ev­er, the last time West In­dies played here, Chris Gayle who has strug­gled on this tour so far, struck 100 against the Prime Min­is­ter's XI and West In­dies will be hop­ing he can em­u­late that per­for­mance.

How­ev­er, Rus­sell said Gayle's pres­ence in the squad is hav­ing a great im­pact on team morale.

The left-hand­ed open­er has just 43 runs from four in­nings–in­clud­ing three sin­gle dig­it scores with his lat­est fail­ure against Pak­istan when he scratched around for 14 de­liv­er­ies over four runs.

"From the warm-up games Chris has been strug­gling and we're still scor­ing 300 runs and he's not giv­ing us those big per­for­mances, even Mar­lon Samuels who is one of our main bat­ters as well," Rus­sell point­ed out.

"So, I just think when these guys peak at the right time, West In­dies has the abil­i­ty to score over 350. They have been good in the dress­ing room...the way they keep mo­ti­vat­ing the team and the team spir­it is very good.

"Chris is not moody. Chris is just an amaz­ing guy that you share the chang­ing room with. Even now he's not scor­ing and he's not mis­er­able, he's not grumpy. He's hap­py, he's laugh­ing, and he's cheer­ing every­one on the field, and that's what we want from a big guy like him, so it's very good."

The ca­pac­i­ty of this ground is 13,550 and the match has been sold out. There were fans try­ing to get last minute tick­ets here yes­ter­day but they were not avail­able.

Teams: West In­dies: Ja­son Hold­er (capt), Mar­lon Samuels, Sulie­man Benn, Dar­ren Bra­vo, Jonathan Carter, Shel­don Cot­trell, Chris Gayle, De­nesh Ramdin, Ke­mar Roach, An­dre Rus­sell, Dar­ren Sam­my, Lendl Sim­mons, Dwayne Smith, Jerome Tay­lor and Niki­ta Miller. Zim­bab­we: El­ton Chigum­bu­ra (capt), Sikan­dar Raza, Reg­is Chak­ab­va, Tendai Chatara, Chamu Chib­hab­ha, Craig Ervine, Tafadzwa Ka­mungozi, Hamil­ton Masakadza, Stu­art Mat­sikeny­eri, Solomon Mire, Rawan­da Mu­pari­wa, Tinashe Pa­nyan­gara, Bren­dan Tay­lor, Pros­per Ut­seya and Sean Williams.