'Winning is contagious' says Lara

Brian Lara has labelled his team's shutout of Zimbabwe an encouraging build-up to face India in their series starting on Thursday in Jamaica.

The Indians, who arrived in the Caribbean last Friday, are expected to provide far stiffer opposition for West Indies than Zimbabwe, who slumped to a 5-0 series loss after a heavy defeat in Sunday's final game at the Queen's Park Oval at Port of Spain.

But Lara believes, regardless of the quality of the Zimbabweans, his team's winning streak against them can definitely be taken as a positive. "Winning can be contagious and we are looking forward to the India series," said Lara. "Credit must be given to the players, to all the players, I think they played really well. It's been a pretty short series in terms of we missed a couple games [due to weather], but I think we've enjoyed it and we've got a lot out of it."

Lara scoffed at suggestions that there was no merit in scoring victories against such a raw and highly inexperienced Zimbabwe side, and asserted that West Indies should take credit for making their superiority show in the results.

"You've got to go out there and win the game, it doesn't matter [what] the opposition and I thought we played really well at certain periods [of the series] and we closed the opposition out," he said. "I think if we do similar against India it augurs well for us in the future."