Lara confirms one-day retirement

West Indies captain Brian Lara has confirmed that he will retire from one-day international cricket at the end of the World Cup.

Lara told the International Cricket Council “I think this is the end of my one-day career, for sure.”

“I honestly feel 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.

“After the World Cup, the next one-day tournament for the West Indies is in June in England and I’d love to sit back and watch and see 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.

“It’s demoralising, yes, but I want to see certain things happen and I want to see the team move on.”

Brian Lara has to date played 297 one-day internationals and scored 10,354 runs at an average of 40.60 with 19 hundreds and 63 fifties.

Lara has said he wants to continue playing Test cricket past his 40th birthday.