But after losing 27 of their last 28 one-day matches and being humiliated in their first two World Cup games, there was genuine relief on the faces of the Bangladesh players when their Group B match against West Indies was abandoned yesterday.

``We lost our last two matches, so we're very happy at the moment,'' said captain Khaled Mashud.

Bangladesh upset Pakistan at the 1999 World Cup, but have not won a game since. They had hoped to end their drought when they were drawn to play Canada in their first match of the 2003 tournament, only to suffer an embarrassing 60-run defeat.

That was followed by a 10-wicket loss to Sri Lanka and it seemed another heavy defeat was on the cards against West Indies when the weather intervened.

``We were trying to win, we thought we had nothing to lose,'' Mashud said. ``We lost our first two matches so we wanted to do well in this match.''

With rain forecast for the afternoon, it was no surprise that Mashud opted to make West Indies bat first, but he said that was not a plan to delay the match until the rain came.

``We thought it was very good conditions for the bowlers so that's why I decided to bowl first,'' he explained.