Lara's young guns ready to fire again

Jamaica: Team India came to the West Indies as favourites for the One-Day series. But after the first two matches, it has become clear that the young West Indies outfit will be tough to crack in the next three games.

In the second One-Dayer on Saturday a crestfallen Indian dressing room saw the world record run of 17 straight wins chasing targets come to a dramatic end.

And defeat brings with it uncomfortable questions. Irfan Pathan's failure in both the games batting at the critical No 3 slot has set tongues wagging.

However, Indian skipper Rahul Dravid does not think the time to end that experiment has come yet.

"Lots of times, good No 3 players have couple of bad games. So for someone a bowling all rounder, I think we should be a little more patient with him," says Dravid.

"And it works really well with the kind of side we have and the kind of combination we pick. So we got to give him some opportunities and see how he fares. Obviously if it's not working then we have to look at it at some stage. But as of now I think we can see this (lineup)."

On the other hand the Windies were brimming with confidence and the joy on their faces tell how much the win meant to them.

The West Indians have been struggling for long and any victory against better opponents gives them hope and confidence to revive the good old days.

"This (consistency) is the key that is missing in our game, even in the test matches," Lara said.

"We find ourselves performing well for a certain amount of time, and we cannot close it out. We are going to try as much as possible to bottle what happened to ensure we use it in the future."

"The good thing about the West Indies team as we have seen it in the last two ODIs is that we do get into positions to win matches," he added.

"Unfortunately, we have either tended to relax, or thrown the opportunity away. In this (Saturday) match, we did not."

"And I think it was a true show of character from the guys, even in Thursday's game when in the last stride India got up to win."

All they have to do is play as a unit like they did in in Jamaica, where the bowlers bowled in the right areas and were backed up by an inspired fielding performance.

Team India knows that winning is a habit, which takes a lot of time to come and just a few days to go away.