Lara keen to shape a winning unit

In his third stint as captain of West Indies, Brian Lara has called for his side to take in as much experience as possible as they build a side for the future. With the third one-day international against Zimbabwe in Guyana being called off due to persistent rain, Lara was left to rue another chance for his young side to get in some much-needed cricket.

"We wanted to get the maximum out of this series with Zimbabwe," Lara told reporters at a news conference. "This includes preparation and the actual cricket. These two weeks of cricket against Zimbabwe were to get us ready for greater things, not only like India in the West Indies, but the rest of the cricket we have for the year. We have the ICC Champions Trophy. We are defending champions, but we find ourselves with a possibility of not making the final eight of the tournament. So we have some serious cricket ahead of us, since we are also going to Pakistan and the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies is less than 12 months away."

Lara emphasised that West Indies needed to play as much cricket as possible as they looked to the future. "We do not expect to go out and win every single match in which we play, but we want to be able to compete in every single match, and learn from every single experience," he said. "It has to start now. We want to arrive at the World Cup with the other teams knowing that the West Indies are going to be a force with which to be reckoned. We have a number of games in which to prove ourselves, so we do not want to be a disappointment."

Lara, who has already lamented his side's batting in the first two matches against Zimbabwe, said that confidence was a big factor. "We want to be able to hold our heads, and enter the World Cup not playing a guessing or with people not confident that we can win. The next 10-11 months is geared towards getting the guys ready, and from now we need to be very, very competitive," he said. "We have spent the time talking about our strengths and weakness, and the different areas in which we have to improve. We have found in the past that we have put ourselves in good situations and unable to grasp the opportunity to finish off matches, so we are analysing past matches, not only games involving West Indies, and entering discussion on areas in which we thought the matches slipped away.

"This is an area in which we are trying to get more of a contribution from the guys and get more cricket talk going. I have sensed over the years that the ability is there, but the problem has been putting together on the field under pressure, so getting the guys accustomed to match scenarios is important to us."