Lara confirms retirement from one-day cricket after the World Cup

The Super Eight ties against Bangladesh and England may be Brian Lara’s last two matches of his illustrious one-day career as the West Indies captain confirmed that he would call it quits from the shorter version of the game after his side was virtually knocked out of the World Cup following their 67-run defeat at the hands of South Africa here.

Lara had earlier expressed his desire to bow out of one-day cricket with a home World Cup victory. He will, however, continue to play Test cricket, where he holds the twin records of most runs (11953) and highest individual score in an innings (400 not out).

''I think this is the end of my one-day career, for sure,'' Lara said after the defeat against the Proteas, the fourth successive Super Eight loss -- which virtually ended the home side’s hopes of going through to the semi-finals.

They have two points, which they carried over from the preliminary stage, and play Bangladesh and England in Barbados on April 19 and 21 respectively.

The defeat will also increase calls for Lara, in his third spell at the helm of the team, to step down as skipper of the England tour just after the World Cup.

''I honestly feel that my game is over and we should give it to one of the younger players. It's really tough playing one-day internationals out there,'' said Lara, who turns 38 next month.

Lara is a member of the exclusive club of six cricketers who have scored more than 10,000 runs in one-day cricket, the other five being Sachin Tendulkar, Sanath Jayasuriya, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Sourav Ganguly, Ricky Ponting and Rahul Dravid.

He has played 297 ODIs and scored 10,354 runs, becoming the fourth run-getter in ODI history at an average of 40.60 with 19 hundreds and 63 half-centuries.

Lara has amassed 11953 runs from 131 Test matches at an average of 52.88 with 34 hundreds and 48 fifties.

West Indies are scheduled to tour England in June, but Lara said he would ''love to sit back and watch the team do well''.

''I want to leave a team that plays better, and that is still my hope. These might be my last two one-day internationals but I still want to see the team moving out of this competition learning something from it and that's all I can hope for,'' he said.

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