Vin­ode Mam­chan

The West In­dies got help from In­dia yes­ter­day as they make a bid to get in­to the quar­ter­fi­nals of the 2015 In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) World Cup in Aus­tralia and New Zealand.

With Group B go­ing down to the wire in terms of de­ter­min­ing who will move in to the quar­ters, the West In­dies got a much need boost by In­dia's em­phat­ic whip­ping of Ire­land. West In­dies, Pak­istan and Ire­land are fight­ing for two places in the quar­ters, with lead­ers In­dia al­ready through and South Africa near­ly there.

The West In­dies have four points from five match­es and will need to de­feat the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates in their fi­nal game to end on six. Cur­rent­ly Pak­istan and Ire­land both have six points. Pak­istan will meet Ire­land in their fi­nal match and who­ev­er los­es, they will bat­tle the West In­dies for the fi­nal spot on Net Run Rate (NRR), as the West In­dies are ex­pect­ed to eas­i­ly get over the UAE.

Cur­rent­ly, the West In­dies have a bet­ter net run rate than Ire­land, so if the Irish los­es against Pak­istan, then all the West In­dies will need to do is to win against UAE, even if it is a close vic­to­ry.

In­dia's big win yes­ter­day pushed the Irish NRR even low­er and they will know that noth­ing but a vic­to­ry over Pak­istan will take them through. If the game ends in a no-re­sult, then the West In­dies will have to pack their bags and head home. Ire­land NNR has now dropped to -1-014, while the West In­dies are at -0.511.

Mean­while, the West In­dies team have set­tled nice­ly in Napi­er and will re­sume train­ing to­mor­row for their fi­nal pre­lim­i­nary clash on Sun­day. The pitch at Napi­er is good for bat­ting and the bound­aries are small, so the big hit­ting West In­di­an bats­men should en­joy them­selves at the venue.

The team has been hav­ing a lot of off field ses­sions, speak­ing about their per­for­mances and they are keen to get in a good per­for­mance against the UAE, get in­to the quar­ters and look to peak from there on­wards.

Stand­ings

GROUP B

TEAMS MAT WON LOST TIED N/R PTS NET RR

In­dia 5 5 0 0 0 10 +2.157

South Africa 5 3 2 0 0 6 +1.462

Pak­istan 5 3 2 0 0 6 -0.194

Ire­land 5 3 2 0 0 6 -1.014

West In­dies 5 2 3 0 0 4 -0.511

Zim­bab­we 5 1 4 0 0 2 -0.595

Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates 4 0 4 0 0 0 -1.691