VIN­ODE MAM­CHAN

West In­dies mid­dle or­der bats­man Dar­ren Bra­vo says that the night be­fore his epic 102 against South Africa, he was busy look­ing at youtube bat­ting clips of the leg­endary Bri­an Lara.

Bra­vo played what he termed his best ever ODI in­nings against South Africa, to take the West In­dies from a per­ilous po­si­tion of 21/4 to 285 all out. South Africa in re­ply was bun­dled out for 185 and as a re­sult, West In­dies will meet Aus­tralia in the fi­nals of the Ballr Tri-se­ries to­day at Kens­ing­ton Oval in Bar­ba­dos.

The dap­per left han­der smashed 102 off 103 balls with 11 fours and four six­es. Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing his knock he said: "I haven't spo­ken to Bri­an for a while but when I am strug­gling, that is my boy, that is my role mod­el so I al­ways go back to him. Last night I looked at some of his bat­ting clips on youtube and it helped me along to­day."

"This was per­son­al­ly my best in­nings at the one day lev­el. The ex­pe­ri­ence of hav­ing Ke­iron Pol­lard out there played a big part in this game. He talked to me every sin­gle ball and we were able to com­mu­ni­cate nice­ly out there.

"We are con­fi­dent in the fi­nals, the fans will come out and sup­port us. It is im­por­tant that we bat well and if the bowlers start well it will be dif­fi­cult for them to bat be­cause Sunil Nar­ine in the mid­dle overs, go­ing to be a plus for us."

Bra­vo came out to bat af­ter strug­gling open­ers John­son Charles and An­dre Fletch­er were back in the hut: "In St. Kitts they gave us two starts and the mid­dle or­der didn't click. They go out there every time try­ing their best and as you know some­times it doesn't come off but at oth­er times it does, so I just want to wish them all the best in the fi­nals. Who knows come Sun­day we could be bat­ting 100 with­out loss, so you can nev­er tell."

Al­though the West In­dies lost their last game against Aus­tralia, Bra­vo is tak­ing heart from the per­for­mance he said: "The last game was a very very close game. The man­ner in which we lost the that game has giv­en us the be­lief that we can beat any team in the world.