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Jaipur, Nov 1: West Indies skipper Brian Lara says his side has "dissected" the South African team and is capable of pulling over another upset win in the Champions Trophy semi-final here tomorrow. Lara, fighting fit now after a troublesome niggle in the back, also downplayed talk of the fierce rivalry between the two teams which was on show when the teams played each other in the last season. "I just want to surround myself with the fact that we're playing good cricket, and executing the tasks we need to really well. We have dissected the South African cricket team and we know exactly what we want to do against them," Lara said at the pre-match conference today.
"In terms of bad blood and all that sort of fickle stuff I think it is unnecessary." The 37-year-old Trinidadian said his team knew its game better now and was better prepared to take on favourites South Africa. "I just feel that we're playing good cricket. Beating South Africa in the opening match of the World Cup was a big game for us. Then we were underdogs, in the Champions Trophy in 2004 we were underdogs, and here as well.
"Tomorrow, South Africa being a higher ranked team will start as favourites. But we know our game so much better now than at any other time of the year and even before." On his fitness, the left-handed batting genius said, "I'm a lot better. I've had a couple of days rest. I didn't bat too long in the last two games. I feel ok. "I felt ok after those games. I'm not 100 percent but getting over those games has given me the confidence to go on." Lara refused to divulge whether he would bat down the order as he did against India and England.
"Things have worked well for us in the three games we played. First we set a target that Australia couldn't get. "Then in the last game we got 272 which people might say was 15-20 runs too few. We had two centurions in that game and so we're quite happy with the way the guys are expressing themselves irrespective of the batting order. "We don't know what's the settled order, we've been unorthodox in this tournament and I can never say we're going to have a fixed order." Lara's take on the Sawai Man Singh wicket was interesting. "It's a good pitch if you get set. Teams playing here have got good starts and then folded up later on. We have to take that into consideration. (Agencies)
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