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Lara century not enough to carry day

This article is more than 20 years old
Australia 576-4dec & 238-3dec
West Indies 408 & 288
Australia won by 118 runs

You could separate the realists from the optimists long before the first ball of the fifth day of the second Test at the Queen's Park Oval yesterday.

The realists knew the young, inexperienced, passionate West Indies team had already done more than could reasonably be expected of them by stretching the game into the fifth day. The optimists were calculating how many runs had to be scored per over to ensure victory.

The arithmetic was easy, deceptively so: 300 runs in the day, divided by three sessions, equalled a mere 100 runs per session, or 3.3 an over, no challenge at all for the West Indies captain and double world record-holder Brian Lara batting with his young, stylish vice-captain Ramnaresh Sarwan.

But with the last two batsmen who could pull it off already at the crease, what was needed was, effectively, a 320-run fourth-wicket partnership.

The seven wickets technically in hand at the start of play did not stand up to close examination even on paper. Marlon Samuels was out for one, and after him came two young men playing only their second Test innings, David Bernard and Carlton Baugh, and the bowlers Vasbert Drakes, Mervyn Dillon and Pedro Collins, more commonly known as a hat-trick, although not on this occasion.

For a glorious morning session, though, hope sprang realistically if not eternally in even the most sceptical West Indian chest. As it has since he joined the team, that hope lay almost completely with Lara.

As long as he was at the crease West Indies had a real chance. He began the day on 52 and a large crowd gathered in the hope of seeing his first hundred at his home ground. Their hopes were realised in another wonderful innings in which he dusted Brad Hogg off like dandruff and imposed his willow on the game.

His hundred came off 301 balls in a nicely symmetrical 301 minutes, with 13 fours and one six. All morning the crowd grew in size and passion, reflecting the drama in the middle. Against very good Australian bowling, the 103 runs Lara and Sarwan made off 180 deliveries represented Test cricket at its lip-biting best.

The slide began with a loose shot from Sarwan, who for the fifth time in his career got himself out pulling unnecessarily. With Sarwan, Samuels and Bernard all going fast and loose, Lara simply could not hold hard and fast. When he was gone, having scored 122 - nearly half West Indies' second-innings runs - it was over.

The change in the entire game was caught in the moment when the Australians, rather than wait for an adjudication from the third umpire, withdrew an appeal for Dillon's wicket. They knew they would probably save time by bowling another ball.

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