How to make it harder for Lara

BRIAN LARA'S first century of the summer, made in the West Indies' second innings of the defeat by England at Old Trafford last week, was a knock of classical defiance. Starting cautiously, as the West Indies went about overhauling their first-innings deficit of 221, Lara displayed a range and boldness of stroke which grew as his partners fell away. In the end his 145 runs took just 216 balls, brisk scoring by any standards and positively speeding at Test level.

When the fourth day began, the West Indies were only three wickets down. Dominic Cork's first-over hat-trick would have broken most teams on the spot. Instead England, conscious that they may have awoken a slumbering giant at the other end, refused to relax. Brian Lara may have been on only 60 runs, as he watched his team-mates disappear in rapid succession, but he was overdue a big score - and England sensed it.

As a broad rule, Lara is stronger on the off-side than the leg, a factor that was evident in the way Michael Atherton, the England captain, set his field. "We've talked a lot about how to bowl at him," Atherton said last week. "You don't want to be giving him too much width to play his cuts or off-drives. So far this series Corky [Dominic Cork] has bowled well at him by bringing the ball back into his pads from a wicket to wicket line. Brian can sometimes get too far across his stumps. So if the ball's straight and he misses it, you've got a good chance of an lbw."

In fact as soon as Lara arrived at the crease on Saturday afternoon, the Derbyshire all-rounder was brought on from the Stretford End and England clearly felt they'd had the left-hander caught behind, when he was still on one. Umpire Cyril Mitchley disagreed and Lara ended the day 59 not out.

For the most part, Atherton was determined to make it hard for Lara to score freely in his favourite areas. "When he's in the mood, he can put the ball where he wants to, particularly on the off-side. For that reason I had a third man most of the time as well as at deep gully and at backward cover point. I wanted him to have to get his runs on the leg-side where he is less able to manouevre his shots exactly where he wants."

As an excercise in manipulation the ploy clearly bore fruit. The waggon wheel diagram (above) clearly shows that only two of Lara's 16 boundaries were scored in the arc behind square cover, both coming off seam bowlers when he was batting at the Warwick Road End. But as a tactical success, it can only be said to have worked from the point of view of damage limitation and the fact that Lara ended some 230 runs light of his last three-figure score against England.

"Obviously, with Corky's hat-trick getting us off to a flyer on Sunday, we started trying to get Lara out, and I set attacking fields," Atherton said. "To the spinners in particular, I kept tinkering with various positions to try to force him to do something uncharacteristic and therefore make an error. In fact, a couple of times he was fortunate to clear the man I had posted on the drive to Winker [Mike Watkinson] and Ernie [John Emburey]."

But Lara is a player with exquisite gifts, not least the ability to take the ball early or late and still strike it with enough power to exploit the gaps in the field. "Once he'd got to a hundred I was in a pretty helpless situation; he was playing that well. I had no option but to put a sweeper out on both sides of the wicket and try to get him off strike in order to attack the batsman at the other end."

Another of the outstanding features of Lara's knock was the way he still managed to score freely off the spinners without getting himself into the kind of difficulties left- handers normally encounter when faced with balls turning away from the bat. Although the pitch didn't offer regular spin, the odd ball turned enough to have persuaded most left-handed batsmen to have stayed rooted to the crease. Not Lara, who used his feet, combining nimble excursions down the pitch to drive with sweeps to leg and neat back-foot dabs to off.

He never allowed either Watkinson or Emburey to settle. As the diagram clearly shows, three sumptuous drives to the extra cover fence and two more through straight mid-wicket against the turn - when Lara was facing spin fvom the Warwick Road End - show just how exacting his footwork must have been in getting to the pitch of the ball, and how crisp his shots were to find the gaps with such precision.

The end came when Lara whipped Angus Fraser off his hips, flat as a skeet to deep square leg, where Nick Knight took an awkward catch coming forward. It was the kind of delivery most mortals would have been happy to tuck away for a single. Lara, though, was a victim - not for the first time - of his extravagant talent.

England supporters will be in two minds about seeing too much of that talent when the teams meet at Trent Bridge on Thursday.