Ricky Ponting has told Shaun Tait to take some time getting his line and length right before letting rip with his fastest deliveries. Tait, who took 2 for 45 from eight overs in Australia’s World Cup opener against Scotland, has been asked to think about how he can contain batsmen as well as claiming wickets.”Early on in the overs, I can get carried away and bowl too fast,” Tait told . “Ricky said to me take it easy, have a couple of deep breaths and get your line right before you try and bowl 160kph and rip your shoulder off the bone. He just wants me to be pretty free and bowl like I bowl.”Tait is likely to take the new ball, bowl during powerplays and return at the death during Australia’s title defence. However, the small dimensions of Warner Park, the St Kitts venue for Australia’s group matches, mean he has little margin for error.”If you get some unlucky nicks through third man or fine leg, it is pretty hard to cut off because they are such small boundaries,” he said. Tait has used short-pitched deliveries effectively but realises he cannot afford to become predictable against quality opposition.”You can’t just keep coming in and bowling bouncers and going for heaps of runs,” he said. “I have to be able to contain as well. The last couple of [warm-up] games I have done it OK. Through the middle period, I have done OK. From what I have seen so far, the inswinging yorker with reverse swing can be a good ball.”

If Brian Lara could choose any island in the West Indies on which totackle Australia, the favourites for this year’s World Cup, it wouldhave to be Antigua. The venue of both his world batting records, 375against England in 1994 and 400 not out ten years later, not tomention West Indies’ world-record run-chase against the Aussies in2003; the island with a beach for every day of the year has cultivatedsome special memories for Lara over the years. How many of those,though, would he be willing to trade for a victory on Wednesday?The teams each carry with them two points after their 100% successful performances in the group stages, so the victor of this match willhave one foot in the semi-finals. It will, however, be pastures newfor both West Indies and Australia when their crucial Super Eightsclash gets underway. Lara’s favourite Antigua Recreation Ground hasbeen bypassed for this tournament, and instead the action will takeplace at the newly inaugurated Sir Vivian Richards stadium outside ofthe capital, St John.The teams have flown in from Kingston and St Kitts respectively, andconditions for this fixture are expected to be very different to whathas so far been experienced. Whereas Sabina Park has beencharacterised by slow cautious innings-building and Basseterre byraucous six-hitting, Antigua’s new stadium promises, in RickyPonting’s opinion, a bit of skid for the new ball and then excellentbatting conditions. The bigger boundaries, however, mean that the sortof run-feast that the Aussies served up against South Africa onSaturday will only materialise in the event of a bowling meltdown.That turn of events is not anticipated, however. West Indies, despitethe odd display of nerves in the opening match against Pakistan, havea side brimming with confidence, and the Australians certainly hold nofear for them. They have been victorious in two of their last fourencounters, in the DLF Cup last September and the subsequent ChampionsTrophy (although both of their defeats have come in the finals of thesame competition) while in the Caribbean they have won three in a rowin their last three meetings with Australia, albeit way back in2002-03.”I think we still have a lot of work to do to match the skills of theAustralia team,” said Lara, revelling in a chance to be the underdogsfor the first time in this competition. “We are dangerous, but theyare more dangerous. They are playing at their best, and I can tellfrom the way they are playing that they are here to make it ahat-trick of wins. They are very confident in their ability.”West Indies, however, need not be in awe of their opponents. With anattack spearheaded by the pacey Jerome Taylor, and featuring theversatile talents of Dwayne Bravo and the under-rated spin of ChrisGayle, it is a line-up far more varied than Australia’s lastopponents, the seam-orientated South Africans, and also far more usedto the sluggish conditions of the modern-day Caribbean. “I am quietlyconfident that we can perform pretty well in this World Cup,” saidLara. “The tournament still has a month left, and it is important totake each game at a time, and not get over-confident.”

West Indies’ batting is equally potent. Gayle, who creamed three ofhis 15 ODI centuries in last year’s Champions Trophy, has been quietso far in this tournament, but he’ll have watched the ease with whichSouth Africa’s Graeme Smith and AB de Villiers climbed intoAustralia’s new-ball attack at Basseterre. But, as ever in WestIndies-Australia contests, there’s one scalp which is going to bevalued just that little bit higher than all the rest.It’s a fact that Lara, who loves the Australian challenge, is only toowell aware of. “It is the thing that actually drives me,” he said.”The thought that the opposition is going to come after the so-calledkey player. That’s the thing that brings a positive response fromsomebody like myself.” With scores of 87 and 71 in those two recentvictories, not to mention his innumerable feats of batsmanship downthe years, Australia know that to silence the captain is half thebattle won.Worryingly for Australia, Lara has thrived in the past against farmore potent attacks that the one they are currently relying on. Thelikes of Brad Hogg, Shaun Tait and Nathan Bracken do not have the samering to them as Shane Warne, Jason Gillespie and Glenn McGrath (circa1998-99), but Ponting was encouraged nonetheless by the way his menstood up to South Africa on Saturday. “If we play like we did [then] Ithink they’ll have a lot to fear,” he said, “but that is up to us. Ithink it will take a performance similar to the one we had the otherday if we are going to beat them.”They’ve won a couple of games against us of late, but in the twofinals we’ve beaten them convincingly. They are avery good one-day side, they should know these conditions better thananyone, and will have some great crowd support.” It all points to yetanother battle royale, as the World Cup begins to come nicely to theboil.West Indies (probable) 1 Chris Gayle, 2 Shivnarine Chanderpaul,3 Brian Lara (capt), 4 Ramnaresh Sarwan, 5 Marlon Samuels, 6 DwayneBravo, 7 Dwayne Smith, 8 Denesh Ramdin, 9 Ian Bradshaw, 10 DarenPowell, 11 Jerome Taylor.Australia (probable) 1 Adam Gilchrist, 2 Matthew Hayden, 3Ricky Ponting (capt), 4 Michael Clarke, 5 Andrew Symonds, 6 MichaelHussey, 7 Shane Watson, 8 Brad Hogg, 9 Nathan Bracken, 10 GlennMcGrath, 11 Shaun Tait.

Pakistan’s players have been ruled out as suspects in the murder of Bob Woolmer, according to the deputy commissioner of Jamaican police. Mark Shields, the detective in charge, said: “It’s fair to say they are now being treated as witnesses.”I have got no evidence to suggest it was anybody in the squad,” he said in Australia’s Herald Sun. “There is still a very strong possibility that [Woolmer] knew the person or persons.”Shields said the players could be ordered back to the West Indies if the situation changed, but there were two diplomats from Pakistan’s Washington embassy representing the squad in Jamaica. “[The diplomats] were taken to the crime scene for the first time today,” Shields said. Pakistan left the Caribbean on Saturday and stopped over in London on their way home after exiting the World Cup in the first round.Shields said investigators were “nowhere near” being able to pinpoint potential suspects or name names and said reports of three fans who were wanted for questioning were “unhelpful”. The British press “are totally wrong with all due respect on this occasion,” Shields told a news conference. “The reality, as I’ve said before, is that there are many potential suspects in this investigation and even more potential witnesses, and we are nowhere near the stage of being able to start naming names in terms of suspects.”Shields was earlier quoted by saying detectives were trying to trace three Pakistani fans who socialised with players at Kingston’s Pegasus Hotel where Woolmer was strangled. The report said the three were believed to have left Jamaica shortly after Woolmer was found dead on March 18.CCTV footage from the 12th floor of the Pegasus Hotel is expected to help the investigators, who have started viewing the tapes of the day Woolmer was strangled. They have also begun to go through Woolmer’s laptop to see if anything on the hard drive can help their inquiries.Jeff Rees, the ICC anti-corruption chief investigator, is due to look at the report of Chris Broad, the ICC match referee, from the Ireland-Pakistan match to determine whether there is any link between the result and Woolmer’s death a day later. Shields said he was looking at the possibility the killing was connected to match-fixing, but stressed he was keeping all lines of inquiry open.

Shahriar Nafees believes Bangladesh need to build on their impressive World Cup performances if they want to be a force in international cricket.Bangladesh emerged as one of the surprise packets of the tournament when they qualified for the second round for the first time since making their World Cup debut in England in 1999.They pulled off a major upset in their opening game when they whipped India by five wickets in Trinidad last month, the victory which virtually knocked the former champions out of the tournament.Bangladesh then proved that the win was no flash in the pan as they shocked top-ranked South Africa by 67 runs in a Super Eights match in Guyana. “If we think this was a very good World Cup for us and we have finished our work, then it will be stupid,” said Nafees.”We are improving at the moment and we need to keep improving. We need to improve our standards of cricket so that in coming years we can be one of the top teams in the world. And that’s our target.”Nafees believed the hard work was the key to Bangladesh’s successes in the ongoing tournament, saying they had been playing good, competitive cricket for more than a year. “We won a lot of games last year. We tried out new combinations and they worked well for us in this tournament,” said Nafees, vice-captain of the side that won eight successive one-dayers before the World Cup.”It was a continuous process and we have been playing very good cricket for the past one year and it paid off for us in this tournament. When we left the country, we expected to play in the second round. All the boys have put in a lot of hard work. They put things together and now we are in the second round.”Bangladesh began their Super Eights campaign on a poor note, losing by big margins against defending champions Australia and New Zealand before surprising South Africa. They also made England struggle for victory in the next match.”We had bad games against Australia and New Zealand, but beat South Africa in the next game. Although we could not score enough runs against England, we put up a very good fight,” said Nafees.He said his side needed to put in a better batting performance in the last two games against debutants Ireland on Sunday and the West Indies on Thursday. “We know we have not put up big scores, but our bowlers have been backing us very well. We are playing well as a team, but it will be fine when we can post big totals. It will also be good for our bowlers,” said Nafees.Bangladesh’s main problem in previous matches was the lack of form of both Bashar and Nafees. Bashar has so far scored 61 runs in seven matches and Nafees 24 in five. “We hope he [Bashar] comes back into form. I am also not getting too many runs in the tournament, but our young players are batting well at the moment,” said Nafees. “Form is a temporary thing, but we are working hard and trying to focus as much as possible. If we can stay a bit longer, I think we can score big.”

Scorecard and ball-by-ball commentary
How they were out