Kingston (Jamaica): Captain Brian Lara believes West Indies' nerve-jangling one-run victory over India in the limited-overs cricket international on Saturday could restore his team's self-confidence.
It was only the fourth success in 25 matches for West Indies against teams ranked above it in the International Cricket Council (ICC) ratings, since the upset victory in the 2004 Champions Trophy in England.
Lara admitted, the team threw away many match-winning positions during that period.
"This (consistency) is the key that is missing in our game, even in the test matches," Lara said.
"We find ourselves performing well for a certain amount of time, and we cannot close it out. We are going to try as much as possible to bottle what happened to ensure we use it in the future."
"The good thing about the West Indies team as we have seen it in the last two ODIs is that we do get into positions to win matches," he added.
"Unfortunately, we have either tended to relax, or thrown the opportunity away. In this (Saturday) match, we did not. And I think it was a true show of character from the guys, even in Thursday's game when in the last stride India got up to win."
Saturday's victory at Sabina Park evened the five-match series at 1-1. The next match is scehduled for Tuesday at St. Kitts.
For India, the defeat broke a record sequence of 17 straight victories batting second.
"We have been chasing really well in ODIs of late, but we had to lose one at some stage," captain Rahul Dravid said.
"It was a target we should have chased successfully, but we ended up not chasing well because we did not bat very well."
"It does hurt to lose, but we have to accept these things. We have to pick ourselves up, and go into the next game and do better. We have done really well so far, so there is no reason to panic because we lost," Dravid added.
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