Skipper elated with victory

BRIAN LARA’S West Indies team ended the Australians’ successful 21-win One Day-International reign when they romped home to a heart-warming 39-run victory in the Fifth Cable & Wireless ODI at the Queen’s Park Oval yesterday. Batting at number three for the first time of the series, Lara led the charge with a match-winning 80 as he shared an invaluable 178 second-wicket partnership with left-handed opener Wavell Hinds (79). West Indies posted the third highest ODIs score at the Oval when they closed their innings at 290 for five off their 50-overs. The touring Aussies, having clinched the seven-match series with four straight victories on Saturday, were pleasantly surprised by a thread-bare bowling attack and faltered as they managed only 251 for nine wickets off their allotted overs.

The memorable victory also prevents the Aussies from making a clean sweep of the series and will spur the homesters to greater achievements. Commenting on his movement up the order Lara said: “In one of our team talks, you always hear that one of the top three have to bat through. “You always want your best batters to bat in the top three and the guys batting through to the 40th over. And you see what happened today.” “We are trying to work on inter-dependence and we don’t want people to depend on certain individuals. We want to depend on each and every single individual of the team. Responsibilities gonna be shared. “And we didn’t come up with the goods in the first four games and it was nice to get into a winning position again.” The 34-year-old Lara looks ahead optimistically to the remaining two matches and stressed: “It’s nice batting at number three but hopefully we can continue winning and it’s not a question of  Lara wearing the number three tag.”