Lara asks batsmen to fire

Brian Lara wants his batsmen to fire at Lahore © AFP

West Indies showed their fighting spirit as they made an impressive attempt to defend 151 in the second one-day international against Pakistan on Thursday and Brian Lara is confident, that with a similar effort, they can level the series at Lahore.

Jerome Taylor, one of the stars of the tour for West Indies, and Corey Collymore took three wickets each but a composed 42 from Inzamam-ul-Haq guided Pakistan home.

"Even though we have lost one game we will try and come [down] tough on Pakistan," said Lara, who also played down the significance of a minor injury he picked up during a net session on Saturday. "I am fine, just getting some treatment. It's been a long tour and we have been away for quite some time. Hopefully, everybody will be available for tomorrow's match, including myself."

West Indies are expecting to be strengthened by the return of Shivnarine Chanderpaul into the middle order and it has been their batting, also missing Ramnaresh Sarwan and Dwayne Bravo, which has often let the team down on this tour.

"The fact that we played well in the second half of the game in Faisalabad is nothing that is surprising to us, we just didn't get the runs," said Lara. "I think our bowlers are capable of keeping the best batting teams in the world to limits. The games we have lost [in] the last three months were because of the batting so we need to get that together."

Pakistan, too, will be without a key player after Younis Khan left the squad after the death of his brother earlier in the week. But Mohammad Yousuf returns after missing the second ODI to be with his wife, who is expecting a baby next month.

Bob Woolmer said his team is taking nothing for granted: "They [West Indies] are already a respected opponent and it was good to win a narrow match at Faisalabad. Narrow matches affect your heartbeat but we still came [out] on top and aim [for] that same performance. It turned out to be a difficult pitch at Faisalabad and there will again be some movement in Lahore."

Pakistan (from) Inzamam-ul-Haq (capt), Imran Farhat, Mohammad Hafeez, Mohammad Yousuf, Shoaib Malik, Abdul Razzaq, Kamran Akmal (wk), Rao Iftikhar, Rana Naved-ul-Hasan, Umar Gul, Abdul Rehman, Danish Kaneria, Mohammad Sami, Yasir Hameed

West Indies (from) Brian Lara (capt), Chris Gayle, Lendl Simmons, Daren Ganga, Marlon Samuels, Runako Morton, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Dwayne Smith, Denesh Ramdin (wk), Ian Bradshaw, Corey Collymore, Jerome Taylor, Daren Powell, Dave Mohammed