MUM­BAI—For­mer West In­dies bat­ting mae­stro Bri­an Lara be­lieves the Caribbean side re­main a feared side in the short­est for­mat but will not be among the favourites for next year’s Twen­ty20 World Cup in Aus­tralia.

West In­dies are reign­ing T20 world cham­pi­ons fol­low­ing their con­quest at the last World Cup in In­dia three years ago but have since en­dured a run of poor re­sults, leav­ing them ninth in the ICC rank­ings on­ly above the likes of Bangladesh and Scot­land.

“What­ev­er tour­na­ment the West In­dies are go­ing to, they’ll nev­er be favourites at this point in time … even when we won the two tour­na­ments in the past,” the for­mer West In­dies cap­tain point­ed out.

“What we do have is the short­er ver­sion of the game. A lot of young play­ers that are com­ing in­to the team, (Shim­ron) Het­my­er, (Nicholas) Pooran, they are very very good in the T20 ver­sion, in the lim­it­ed-overs ver­sion of the game.”

He con­tin­ued: “The tal­ent is there, and I’ve al­ways said in the past that the West In­dies have some of the best tal­ents in the world com­ing through. What we do with that tal­ent, how we har­ness that tal­ent is the most im­por­tant part.

“I reck­on that the next eight, ten months be­fore the World Cup there will be a lot of plan­ning. You may even see some new faces com­ing through. If you lis­ten to any oth­er teams in the world or cap­tains, they’re very wary of the West In­dies. They nev­er ever take us for grant­ed, which is a good thing. So hope­ful­ly we will make a good show­ing com­ing to the World Cup.”

The T20 World Cup is set for Oc­to­ber 8 to No­vem­ber 15 and West In­dies will hope to make their mark es­pe­cial­ly af­ter pro­duc­ing a huge­ly dis­ap­point­ing show­ing at the 50-overs World Cup ear­li­er this year in Eng­land.

In the wake of that de­ba­cle, Crick­et West In­dies have made sev­er­al changes, among them ap­point­ing Kieron Pol­lard as white-ball cap­tain and an­nounc­ing for­mer Test bats­man Phil Sim­mons as the new head coach. (CMC)