Confident Lara back for Windies

West Indies cricket captain Brian Lara is back after missing the first Cable and Wireless One-Day International match in Guyana and will lead the Caribbean cricketers today against England. The second match is on today weather permitting at the Queen’s Park Oval in Port-of-Spain. Tickets for the match are sold out and more than 27,000 fans are expected to show up from early o’clock to see the new world record holder, His Excellency Brian Lara. The dapper left-hander speaking to the media yesterday said his injury has healed sufficiently to allow him to take part in the match. “I am going out there to help win this match for the West Indies,” he said emphatically. Lara chipped a bone in his right index finger during the First Test and played throughout the series with the painful injury. He saved West Indian pride with his incredible knock of  400 not out against England in the Fourth and final Test of the Cable and Wireless series at St John’s Antigua last Monday.

The 34-year-old had broken Sir Gary Sobers’ record of 366, scoring 375 at the same ground in 1994. Australian Matthew Hayden then claimed the standard getting 380 against Zimbabwe last year. When he walks out to bat against England today he is expected to be greeted to deafening cheers from the massive crowd expected to be on hand. Lara is confident that his team can defeat England and square the series. “The guys have been working very hard and we are really looking to get a win here  tomorrow (today),” he said. “Our guys need to go out there, be focused and positive and things will work out,” he said. Coach Gus Logie also sounded confident and said that he expected his batsmen to have a good run this weekend. “After looking at the pitch this morning, I noticed that it is very dry and this will help the batsmen. We can expect to have some runs scored this weekend. The guys have done their work and after their narrow loss in the first match, they are going to come hard at England this time around,”
logie said.

The West Indies have trimmed their squad to 12 from the original 14, omitting Barbadians Ryan Hinds and Ian Bradshaw. The final XI will be declared this morning at the toss. Meanwhile, England practised at the Oval yesterday and are very confident of extending their lead in the series. Vaughn also spoke on Lara’s return. "He’s a huge threat, a world-class player, and they’ll get a huge lift by him playing tomorrow. He’s on his home ground and he’s one of a number of their batters who are very dangerous in the one-day arena,” said Vaughan. “We’ll have to be wary about him but there is also Chris Gayle, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan to worry about as well. They are a very exciting batting line-up, and we’ll have to be at our best in the field if we are to restrict them. It’s going to be a great match with Brian Lara coming back to his home ground having just scored 400, it’s going to be some atmosphere, but it’s a funny game cricket — the other day he got 400, but he could go out tomorrow (today) and get nought,” the England captain said.

England are expected to make one change this weekend with the inclusion of last year’s “golden boy” James Anderson. It’s been a frustrating tour for Anderson who is yet to play an international game. The English are expected to rest either Steve Harmison or Andrew Flintoff who has played throughout the tour. Vaughn had an extended session with the bat yesterday and will be hoping to continue where he left off in the final Test when he got 140 runs. One of the major worrying factors today is the weather and judging from yesterday’s downpour it will not be too far off to say that a late start is expected today. Before the rain fell after lunch the ground was already saturated and with the continuing rain, the situation worsened.

Teams: West Indies: Brian Lara (capt), Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Chris Gayle, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Brian Lara, Ricardo Powell, Dwayne Smith, Dwayne Bravo, Ridley Jacobs, Ravi Rampaul, Mervyn Dillon and Corey Collymore.
England: Michael Vaughn (capt), Marcus Trescothick, Andrew Strauss, Paul Collingwood,  Andrew Flintoff, Rikki Clarke, Chris Read, Ashley Giles, Darren Gough, Stephen Harmison and James Kirtley.