Bangla crushed, Lara eyes Lanka now

Jaipur, Oct 11 (UNI) The pressure of qualification may have gone off the shoulders but West Indies skipper Brian Lara is not relaxing for he wants to conquer Sri Lanka now to sail into the Champions Trophy main stage as the numero uno side.

After crushing Bangladesh by 10 wickets, Lara insisted his side can't be complacent and should go all out in the last qualifying match against Sri Lanka.

''The game on Saturday is very, very important for us. We would love to qualify as number one team and move on,'' he said.

And he feels Sri Lanka won't take the match lightly either.

''No one wants to pick themselves up from a loss going into the more important stage of the tournament. Both the teams are going to be very competitive. We are going to put our best XI and we are going to go really strongly for a win.

''Three wins on a trot, going into the second stage of the tournament, is definitely going to be positive. No room for experiments and we might return here to play the semifinals,'' he said.

The only concern for Lara seemed the viral fever that already has inflicted four of his teammates.

''It's definitely a concern. It started with (Ramnaresh) Sarwan and then Runako Morton and Dwayne Smith, and now Fidel Edwards.

There has not been a day when someone in the team was not ill,'' he said.

Lara's Bangladesh counterpart Habibul Bashar, meanwhile, called it a bad game and felt his side threw away a god foundation.

''We played bad shots and threw away wickets in the middle. It was not acceptable, particularly after being 95-1 at one stage,'' Bashar said.

He, however, was all praise for half-centurion Aftab Ahmed and said the batsman was an aggressive player by nature.

''That's his natural game. It is a bit unfortunate that he consistently gets good starts but doesn't go on to make it a hundred,'' he said.

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