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| Volume No. 1 Issue No. 38 - Sunday March 02, 2003 |
 West Indies Knocked Out of World Cup
 by Thomson Fontaine
The West Indies World Cup title hopes was dashed after a six-run loss to Sri Lanka. The West Indies remains on 10 points trailing Sri Lanka, New Zealand, South Africa and Kenya. The top three teams go through to the next round.
Meanwhile, Kenya went through to the super six round after defeating Bangladesh. This follows on their defeat of Sri Lanka, Canada and South Africa, and a forfeit by New Zealand. It now appears likely that they will be joined by Sri Lanka and possibly New Zealand or South Africa to go through to the second round. New Zealand refused to play in Kenya for security reasons.
West Indies entered the game against Sri Lanka knowing that they had to win. They successfully restricted Sri Lanka to 228 off their allotted 50 overs but fell short of the target by 6 runs.
Chanderpaul scored a well played 65 and Sarwan (47 not out) batted heroically after returning from the hospital, where he underwent treatment after been struck in the head by a short pitched delivery from Fernando. The only other batsman to impress was Chris Gayle (55), while Lara and Hooper went cheaply.
West Indies may consider themselves unlucky after seeing the match, which they were expecting to win against Bangladesh, washed out by rain. However, with losses to New Zealand and Sri Lanka they have shown that they are still well below a world-class team. Their final game will be against Kenya on Tuesday.
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