Lara: My Run-out Was Bad Judgement

A day after crashing to a stunning 20-run World Cup loss against New Zealand, champion batsman Brian Lara has admitted his run-out dismissal was a "bad piece of judgement."

In a first person column for the Trinidad Guardian newspaper, Lara said: "My personal dismissal was a bad piece of judgement. I never thought that Lou Vincent would relay the ball to Cairns. I felt it was three comfortable runs and the ball would be looped in from the deep. But Cairns surprised me with his powerful and accurate throw."

The left-hander said his dismissal was perhaps the lift the Kiwis wanted, noting that they applied the pressure afterwards.

Like captain Carl Hooper, Lara pointed to the dropped catch by Marlon Samuels as another crucial miss in the game. "We dropped a vital catch that allowed New Zealand to add 25 runs that they should not have gotten," Lara wrote, while conceding the 242 target "should not have been beyond us."

We batted poorly, plain and simple and paid the price. If we are going to win matches, it is necessary for one of our top three batsmen to take us way into the last ten overs or so. Unfortunately, that did not happen. And a score that was more than gettable, proved to be beyond our reach," Lara wrote.

He explained that the West Indies usually approached batting in four parts -- aggression, accumulation, acceleration and finish but said everything was "out of sync" between the 10th and 15th overs.

Lara had special praise for middle order batsman Ramnaresh Sarwan, who stroked a 99-ball 75 in the losing cause. "Sarwan continued to show what a fine talent he is. He was awesome against the hosts on Sunday but yesterday, he was asked to play a different role and responded well," Lara said.

"Even when he and Jacobs were rebuilding, it was always going to be tough. Having to get eights runs per over in the last ten overs is not a problem if you have wickets in hand. But Sarwan and Jacobs had to take chances and preserve their wickets at the same time. They did well and showed tremendous character ? something which this team has in abundance," Lara added.

Despite the loss, Lara believes the West Indies will qualify for the Super Six stage along with South Africa and Sri Lanka. "I suspect that new Zealand will reconsider their decision not to play in Kenya. They still have to play South Africa and have lost to Sri Lanka. They cannot afford to forfeit those four points if they hope to reach the next round," he said.

"With all due respects to the minnows, we have to score emphatic wins against them, since we do not want to face a situation like we did in 1996 when we went out because of run rate. I think that there is a general feeling of disappointment but we are not going to allow this game to change our focus, we have already flushed it out of our system and are putting things in place to move on," he added.