Cozier lashes captain for batting at No 6

Veteran cricket writer Tony Cozier believes the decision by West Indies captain Brian Lara to drop himself down the batting order — behind both Ridley Jacobs and Shiv Chanderpaul — was a “shameful shirking of responsibility.” In a column appearing in Caribbean newspapers on Tuesday, Cozier said it was a “cop out” and chided the West Indies captain for giving the psychological advantage to the English bowlers. “When Lara still did not appear at the dismissal of vice-captain Ramnaresh Sarwan at 54 for three shortly after lunch, sending Shivnarine Chanderpaul instead, there was no other interpretation than that it was a shameful shirking of responsibility by the captain of a team in desperate need of his leadership and his feared batting,” Cozier wrote.

He described Lara’s “tactical” decision as “the official hoisting of the white flag by a West Indies team humiliated by their  all-out 47 and defeat in the First Test and its collapse to 208 in the first innings here. “The mighty West Indies team under the direction of Clive Lloyd established a policy that has become the prototype for all others of targeting the opposition captain on the sound supposition that once the head is destroyed, the whole body would also wither,” Cozier wrote. He added, “Lloyd left a succession of broken captains in his wake. England have followed it to the letter this series. They are as aware as every team in the world that Lara is the hub around which the West Indies batting is built. The effectiveness of the strategy, executed by a group of eager, well prepared young fast bowlers, was reflected in Lara’s scores — 23, 0 and 0.”

Cozier, who covers the game for radio, television and news outlets around the world, said the reasons for Lara’s decision to bat at No 6 just did not make sense. “The reasoning would have been that Lara needed to come to the crease when the ball was softer and the bowlers wearier. It would be the chance for him to regain his form and confidence and build a challenging lead. “These were limp reasons for what, however it is dressed, was a cop out.”