'It's looking tough': Holder glum after WI World Cup loss

Taunton: Jason Holder says the West Indies face a tough task to reach the World Cup semi-finals after their dismal seven-wicket defeat against Bangladesh on Monday.

Holder's side fell victim to the second highest run chase in World Cup history as Bangladesh reached 322-3 with 8.3 overs to spare at Taunton.

It was a bitter pill to swallow for Holder after they had posted a solid 321-8, only to implode with a combination of woeful fielding and sloppy bowling.

The West Indies have lost three of their five matches and, with four games left, captain Holder conceded there is only a slim chance they can make the semi-finals in the 10-team tournament.

"It's looking tough at this present moment, but it's not impossible. We have to play every game here now as a final," Holder said.

"We've got to win every game left to give ourselves a really good chance."

New Zealand and India, both in fine form, are the West Indies' next two opponents and they must beat both to remain in contention.

"If we want to go through into the semi-finals we've got to beat the best teams," Holder said.

"We've got to back ourselves and be more clinical with the ball.

"A few top edges didn't go our way, but we didn't help ourselves as well.

"We've also got to score more runs because we haven't got a batsman with a hundred yet.

"I thought with the pitch dimensions we could have got 365-375 but we were well short, 40 or 50 runs."

Meanwhile, West Indies assistant coach Roddy Estwick urged his side to stick together and come back stronger after suffering a crushing seven-wicket defeat to Bangladesh in the World Cup here.

"Stop looking for excuses and start finding solutions," he said.

"If you look at it, I thought we were 60 runs short on that pitch and on that size field. We then didn't take the opportunities that came our way. We were always behind Bangladesh once they got through to 70/1," said Estwick after WI lost its third match on the trot in five games.

"The big players didn't kick on but saying that we made 321 runs and should have been able to defend that. But we can stand here, saying 'if this' and 'if that' — we didn't play well, we've lost the cricket game and that's that."