Lara record may never be broken, says Ponting

SYDNEY: Australian cricket captain Ricky  Ponting said yesterday that Brian Lara’s 400 not out will likely never be beaten because few skippers would jeopardise a winning position by allowing one player to bat for so long. Lara’s quadruple century for the West Indies erased the mark of 380 and took nearly 13 hours to complete. As captain, Lara batted until after lunch on the third day as the West Indies amassed 751 for five  declared. It left the hosts without enough time to win and the match was drawn after England won the opening three Tests.

Ponting said Australia’s desire to secure victory as  quickly as possible would make it difficult for any of the batsmen, himself included, to beat Lara’s feat. “It’s hard to imagine an Australian player doing it, just because of the way we play our cricket. It’s generally not the way we play,” said Ponting. “I’ve read some of the reports in the paper over the last couple of days about Lara’s innings. Their whole first innings might have been geared around one individual performance and they could have let a Test match slip because of it.

“They ran out of time in the match — that’s not the way the Australian team plays.” Hayden’s 380 against Zimbabwe in Perth last October took just over 10 hours in a match Australia won by an innings and 175 runs early on the fifth day. Ponting said then captain Steve Waugh’s decision to let Hayden keep batting, in an effort to break Lara’s previous world record of 375, was the exception to the team rule. “It was a very rare thing what we did with that Zimbabwean Test match, for Matty to be able to bat for as long as he did and go on and make that big score,” said Ponting.

“He was given the opportunity to go on and break Brian’s record and he did that. He was going to be given another half an hour, or 20 minutes, to try to get to 400 but unfortunately he got out.” Ponting said he was only vaguely interested in individual records. “It would be nice if you could be the world record holder but at the end of the day, as we’ve seen, it doesn’t necessarily win you a Test match, which is what we’re all about,” said Ponting.