Harper unruffled by early Lara failure
By Sports.com's Mark Lamport-Stokes
WEST Indies coach Roger Harper has played down the double failure of his star batsman Brian Lara in the team's tour opener against Worcestershire which ended in a draw at New Road on Sunday. Lara faced a combined total of six balls in the three-day match for successive scores of one and, in both innings, he was removed via leg-side catches behind. But Harper insisted he was not that concerned about Lara's low-scoring form, while he said that an injury scare to the record-breaking batsman was "nothing we should be worried about". Lara suffered a slight scrape to his heel when he was caught by a team-mate's boot spikes in the dressing room at tea on the second day. CONFIDENT MOOD "He's okay," Harper said, emphasising that Lara was in confident mood despite his two early failures on tour. "We haven't had a chance to really assess his form, but Brian is a top-class player and we know that, as the tour progresses, he will come into his own. Brian is very confident within himself and he's in reasonable shape in the nets." Lara himself said in a newspaper interview over the weekend that a recent visit to a New Jersey psychologist had inspired him to take a new approach to the game, whereby he would endeavour to strike a healthy balance between success and failure. Lara surrendered the West Indian captaincy to Jimmy Adams in March after a disastrous away tour to New Zealand and he had not played any competitive cricket since then. But his return to batting form is crucial to the West Indies' chances of competing against England this summer. DANGER SIGNS "Now I am starting out again," Lara said. "There are danger signs I will be looking out for, but I have a plan to cope should they appear again." While Lara notably failed with the bat at New Road, West Indian number four Shivnarine Chanderpaul covered himself in glory and spared his side a great deal of embarrassment as his authoritative 161 not out earned the tourists a morale-boosting draw. Harper was full of praise for the eventual man-of-the-match. "Naturally, it's always pleasing to see one of the batsmen getting a century. It's a pity we couldn't have at least another but we can take this as a positive and move on from here." The wristy Guyana batsman faced 310 deliveries in all and struck 24 fours as he held the West Indies batting together virtually single-handed on the third and final day.
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