England to play for pride against Windies in inconsequential tie

Ahmedabad, Oct 27 (UNI) England, who have already been knocked out of the Champions Trophy with two straight defeats, will be playing for pride and getting into a positive framer of mind before the Ashes when they take on West Indies in their last Super Eight Group 'A' match at the Sardar Patel stadium, Motera here tomorrow.

West Indies, with two wins from as many matches, have booked their semifinal berth and will be looking to use this match to fine tune their strategies ahead of the bigger battles.

However, West Indies captain brian lara after the win over of India yesterday has promised that his team would show no complacency and come hard against England.

Lara, who played the match against India with only 80 per cent fitness, ruled out the possibility of him skipping the game for some rest. ''I think I've got 36 hours or so before the game starts,'' he said. ''At the end of the day, if I'm fitter than I was against India, I'll definitely play.'' ''It's important that we get the best team out there. We don't want to have a hiccup at this time. We did that in Malaysia, where we experimented in the game before the final, and lost the momentum.'' Lara further said that they had the batting line-up that they want. ''What we need is to keep winning games and not lose momentum mid stream, he said. When asked whether he might be tempted to experiment a little with the combination,'' he explained.

''It's hard to tell you what the plans are before the team meeting. We don't know what the XI is going to be. [Corey] Collymore is on his way back to India [after having flown home for the birth of his daughter]. The necessity is to win.'' MORE UNI GS WD PM RN1512