Brian Lara has cited the failure to handle pressure as the main reason why the West Indies' bowling and fielding repeatedly went to pieces during the Test series against South Africa.

"International cricket is a lot about handling pressure," the West Indies captain said, following his team's defeat by 10 wickets in the fourth and final Test that completed a 3-0 series loss.

"If you can't handle pressure situations, things go wrong and I feel, most of the time, the pressure situations are what caused the lapses in any departments of our game," he added.

Lara noted that, throughout the series, South Africa's batting had "our backs against the wall" and his team faltered.

"It's tough to lose matches but I think the South Africans played good cricket," he said. "We had to play catch up from day one and were able to do it on a couple of occasions but not the entire series.

"It was very hard to win a Test match facing a first innings total of more than 500 every time.

"After one or two days, we had to look for a draw but we were able to only squeeze out one."

Batting first, South Africa totalled 561 in the first test, 532 in the third and 604 for six declared in the fourth. When they sent in the West Indies in the second Test in Durban and bowled them out fort 264, they replied with 658 for nine declared.

But Lara dismissed comparisons with the West Indies' previous tour of South Africa, in 1998/99, also under his captaincy, when they lost all five Tests and 61 in the oneday series. "They are two different situations," he said. "I think you would understand that this team has done a far better job than [the team] in that series."

He cited the batting as the main area of improvement. While there was no individual hundred in the five Tests five years ago, there were eight this time.

Lara himself scored 202 in the first Test and 115 in the third, Ramnaresh Sarwan 114 in the second and 119 in the fourth, Chris Gayle 116 in the third and 107 in the fourth, Shivnarine Chanderpaul 108 in the second and Dwayne Smith an unbeaten 105 on debut in the third.

Only twice, have the West Indies amassed more in a series and both over five Tests.

There were 11 against India in India in 1953 that included the last four of Everton Weekes' standing record of five in consecutive innings, and nine against Australia in the Caribbean in 1955, five by Clyde Walcott.

The stability of the batting has been the most positive aspect of Lara's return last April for a second term as captain.

In the 12 Tests since, there have been 18 individual threefigure scores, six team totals over 400 and only one under 200.

The days of 51 against Australia in Port-of-Spain in 1999 and 54 and 61 against England seemed to have passed into history.

Lara himself has scored a double hundred each against Sri Lanka and South Africa and four single-hundreds.

The other hundreds have come from Sarwan and Chanderpaul, three each; Gayle and Daren Ganga two; Smith and Wavell Hinds one each.

Lara said he was "pretty sure" the batsmen would not lose their confidence for the series of five one-day internationals that start at Newlands here on Sunday.

"I think we're going to get much more favourable results [in the one-day series]," he predicted. "If we play good cricket on any particular day in the shorter version of the game, we can come up trumps."

The problem in the Tests, he noted, was the inconsistency from one day to the next, from one session to the next. He used the last two days of the fourth and final Test as an example.