St John’s: Antigua has been Brian Lara’s happy hunting ground and the West Indies captain hopes to be lucky again when his team crosses sword with Australia in the World Cup Super Eight opener here on Tuesday.

Australia have been in menacing form, amassing 300-plus scores in each of the three group matches, which also included a mammoth 377 against South Africa, who had replaced them as the No.1 ODI squad.

An undaunted Lara, however, promised to make life difficult for the defending champions at the new Sir Viv Richards Stadium.

“I know it is a different class of opponents in the game on Tuesday, but we’ve played well against Australia in the recent past and we expect to do well if we play to our strengths,” said Lara.

Lara shares a special relationship with Antigua and it was at the Old Antigua recreation ground where he created history in 2004, scoring the highest-ever Test score of 400.

Ponting’s side is on a high after beating bitter rivals South Africa by 83 runs on Saturday but he is not underestimating the hosts here. “The West Indies are a very dangerous team. They are on home soil, they know these conditions very well and they have great crowd support from all over the Caribbean,” he said.

Now that the field has been pruned and teams have their works cut out, Ponting said the real action would soon unfold. “It starts now. Every step you take in this tournament becomes more and more exciting.”

TEAMS

Australia (from): Ricky Ponting, Adam Gilchrist, Nathan Bracken, Michael Clarke, Brad Haddin, Matthew Hayden, Brad Hodge, Brad Hogg, Michael Hussey, Mitchell Johnson, Stuart Clark, Glenn McGrath, Andrew Symonds, Shaun Tait, Shane Watson.

West Indies: Brian Lara, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Chris Gayle, Dwayne Smith, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Dwayne Bravo, Marlon Samuels, Ian Bradshaw, Corey Collymore, Jerome Taylor, Denesh Ramdin, Devon Smith, Lendl Simmons, Daren Powell, Kieron Pollard.

Match starts 7 pm. (Agencies)