BENONI (South Africa), Feb 17: Brian Lara has pledged to pile on the misery for Bangladesh’s hopelessly outclassed team as the West Indies aim to get their World Cup campaign back on track here on Tuesday.

After an impressive and nailbiting three-run win over South Africa in their first match of the tournament in Cape Town, the Windies came crashing back down when they were beaten by New Zealand in Port Elizabeth.

“With all due respect to the minnows, we have to score emphatic wins against them, since we don’t want to face a situation like we did in 1999 when we went out because of run rate,” said Lara who was skipper at the last tournament in England and where the mathematics of the situation meant they were denied a place in the Super Six.

Furthermore, Lara warned that the momentum that had been built up with their win over the hosts had been squandered against the Kiwis whose battling display in the field thwarted the West Indies run chase.

“If we are going to win matches, it is necessary for one of our top three batsmen to take us into the last ten overs or so. Unfortunately, that did not happen against New Zealand.

“So a score that was more than gettable, proved to be beyond our reach,” Lara wrote in his Trinidad newspaper column.

“We usually approach our batting in four parts — aggression, accumulation, acceleration and finish.

“We were out of sync with all of them in Port Elizabeth and we lost our way between the tenth and 15th over.”

Lara was full of praise for the batting of Ramnaresh Sarwan (75) and wicket-keeper Ridley Jacobs (50) who featured in a record stand of 98 for the seventh wicket against New Zealand and are being relied upon for valuable late runs.

“Having to get eights runs per over in the last ten overs is not a problem if you have wickets in hand. But Sarwan and Jacobs had to take chances and preserve their wickets at the same time.

“I think there is a general feeling of disappointment but we are not going to allow this game to change our focus, we have already flushed it out of our system and are putting things in place to move on.”

By contrast, Bangladesh only have pride to play for having lost to Canada and Sri Lanka, defeats which extended their losing run to 27 out of 28 matches, the other being washed out.

Captain Khaled Mashud conceded his team was not playing well.

“We are capable of doing better than this, but the batting is just not working,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mashud will attempt to re-launch his side’s wretched campaign with a novel tactic — collective amnesia.

The team have not won a one-dayer or a Test match since the 1999 World Cup but Mashud is determined not to dwell on those four long years.

“We have to forget the games lost. We now have to focus on the games ahead,” he said.

Teams (from):

WEST INDIES: Carl Hooper (captain), Ridley Jacobs, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Pedro Collins, Corey Collymore, Mervyn Dillon, Vasbert Drakes, Chris Gayle, Wavell Hinds, Brian Lara, Jermaine Lawson, Nixon McLean, Ricardo Powell, Marlon Samuels, Ramnaresh Sarwan.

BANGLADESH: Khaled Mashud (captain), Al-Shahriar, Alok Kapali, Habibul Bashar, Hannan Sarkar, Ehsanul Haque, Sanwar Hossain, Khaled Mahmud, Manjurul Islam, Mashrafe Mortaza, Mohammad Ashraful, Mohammad Rafique, Talha Jubair, Tapash Baisya, Tushar Imran

Umpires: Russell Tiffin (Zimbabwe) and Brian Jerling (South Africa).

TV umpire: Billy Bowden (New Zealand).

Match referee: Gundappa Viswanath (India).—AFP/Reuters