Bri­an Lara

I ar­rived in Eng­land some ten days ago, in the mid­dle of the first warm-up game for the West In­dies team's tour of Eng­land.

It was back to busi­ness as usu­al, with the Eng­lish me­dia al­ready sharp­en­ing their knives-sor­ry, pen­cils-to write in­glo­ri­ous­ly about the state of our crick­et. Let's be hon­est: the news has been the same for some 12 years now with clash­es be­tween West In­dies and Eng­land, af­ter we toured here in the year 2000. My hon­est feel­ing, though, is that this pre­dom­i­nant­ly young and in­ex­pe­ri­enced team war­rants a sec­ond glance-they are a very tal­ent­ed bunch.

The tour so far

Rain re­strict­ed the three-day fix­ture be­tween the West In­dies and Sus­sex to 39 overs, enough to ex­pose our dis­like of wet and se­vere­ly cold con­di­tions. The West In­dies team trav­elled to Northamp­ton to take on the Li­ons, the Eng­land A Team, in a four-day game, which we lost by ten wick­ets. Thank­ful­ly the me­dia still had enough lead in their pen­cils to de­scribe Dar­ren Bra­vo as the "re­al deal" af­ter his first-in­nings half-cen­tu­ry in very tough con­di­tions. Again, a West In­di­an play­er was able to stran­gle some niceties from the me­dia with a well-played cen­tu­ry. Kier­an Pow­ell scored 108 in the sec­ond in­nings. On­ly ten "vic­tims" for our bowlers so far is wor­ry­ing, but what could be more cost­ly is ru­mours of nig­gling in­juries. Ke­mar Roach hurt his an­kle and couldn't bowl in the sec­ond in­nings of the Northamp­ton game; Fi­del Ed­wards' sus­pect back hope­ful­ly can hold up for the en­tire tour; and Ravi Ram­paul's stiff neck should not keep him out for long.

West In­dies team

I don't know if you're see­ing the same thing I'm see­ing, but there are some pos­i­tive signs. Bra­vo, Pow­ell and the num­ber-one bats­man in the world, "Chan­ders," must be go­ing in­to this Test feel­ing con­fi­dent that if they get a start, they are in good enough form to put their names on the cedar­wood board in the dress­ing room re­served for cen­tu­ry-mak­ers and for bowlers tak­ing five wick­ets or more in a Test match. A lot more is need­ed to win Test match­es. So the West In­dies team have to dig deep­er for more re­sources and ar­moury for this bat­tle. Any bats­man who makes a cen­tu­ry on de­but, away from home against the num­ber-one team in the world at the time, Aus­tralia, de­serves to be in the team. I think so and maybe he thinks so as well-and that is where the prob­lem lies. Adri­an Barath needs to re­vis­it those days and ask him­self if he is as hun­gry, dis­ci­plined and ded­i­cat­ed to­day as he was back then- be­cause those three words can turn you in­to a whole dif­fer­ent ma­chine.

That can bring the right type of ner­vous­ness, which all great sports­men will tell you was al­ways present, and, most im­por­tant­ly clar­i­ty. Clar­i­ty about your skill lev­el, goal-set­ting, the op­po­si­tion's strengths and weak­ness­es, and the right amount of con­fi­dence-not over-con­fi­dence-need­ed to suc­ceed. Kirk Ed­wards has been a sol­id per­former, and de­serves to go in­to the Test match with the sound back­ing of his team­mates and man­age­ment team. He bats in a po­si­tion re­served for the very best, but at present lacks the form. Sim­ple. He has to be told what his role is. And that, I feel, is to play the an­chor role, spend time in the mid­dle whilst the more in-form play­ers take con­trol. Let me make it very clear: I have spo­ken to Mar­lon Samuels on a few oc­ca­sions since my last match on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage, and I re­mem­ber even speak­ing to him that evening, think­ing a lit­tle show of re­morse or, "Tough luck, Skip," would've been good enough. Still wait­ing, but that's wa­ter un­der the bridge. My on­ly gen­uine dis­ap­point­ment with Mar­lon Samuels is his in­abil­i­ty to ful­fil the huge po­ten­tial he showed when he burst on to the in­ter­na­tion­al stage 12 years ago. No bet­ter time than now, Mar­lon.

The Eng­land team

The Eng­lish team is a very pro­fes­sion­al out­fit. Their play­ers' sta­tis­tics are some of the best in the world and their record at home for the last ten years is en­vi­able. Scor­ing over 400 runs in an in­nings and tak­ing 20 wick­ets has be­come a habit dur­ing their suc­cess­ful pe­ri­od. What the West In­dies can hope for is an al­ter­ation in the Eng­lish team's plan for this se­ries af­ter their win­ter blem­ish. It would be dif­fi­cult to find a more con­sis­tent open­ing pair in world crick­et at the mo­ment than the Eng­lish cap­tain An­drew Strauss and Alas­tair Cook. Alas­tair is go­ing about his busi­ness of scor­ing runs in an un­at­trac­tive way, but one that's very ben­e­fi­cial for his team. The cap­tain, on the oth­er hand, has strug­gled: in his last 49 in­nings, he has on­ly record­ed one cen­tu­ry. The same could've been said about Ten­dulkar in pur­suit of his 100th in­ter­na­tion­al hun­dred. Strauss is no Ten­dulkar, but he is good enough to make this a big se­ries for him­self with the bat. Trott, Pietersen and Bell form a mid­dle or­der that can be sub­dued if nec­es­sary and pile on the runs, or, most dev­as­tat­ing, putting the op­po­si­tion on the de­fen­sive. A very dan­ger­ous play­er with the bat will be their wick­et­keep­er, Matt Pri­or, an at­tack­ing bats­man-not as good as Adam Gilchrist, but he has had a fair share of suc­cess, and has pro­duced match-win­ning per­for­mances when Eng­land most need­ed it. Their bowl­ing is go­ing to be spear­head­ed by James An­der­son and Stu­art Broad. An­der­son is a class act and will pose a big chal­lenge for the West In­dies top-or­der bats­men if they bat first this morn­ing. The Eng­lish se­lec­tors have ex­per­i­ment­ed with their third fast-bowl­ing op­tion, but one thing they have found is a spin­ner in Graeme Swann. Some out­stand­ing per­for­mances place him in the up­per ech­e­lon of spin­ners in the 21st cen­tu­ry.

Strat­e­gy

Eng­land, late last year, were com­pre­hen­sive­ly beat­en by Pak­istan, and man­aged to pull off a drawn se­ries in Sri Lan­ka-and still they re­main at the top of the ICC Test rank­ings. Cred­it to them: they have dis­tanced them­selves from the pack and could af­ford a hic­cup or two. They are wound­ed from their win­ter re­sults and could re­act in a cou­ple of ways. It will do the West In­dies team no harm if Eng­land de­cides to ag­gres­sive­ly seek and de­stroy their op­po­si­tion. That is not their nor­mal suc­cess­ful ap­proach, ap­plied in the past to get them to the top of the world crick­et rank­ings. They are a team that went about their plans in a pa­tient and me­thod­i­cal man­ner, strik­ing on­ly when the time was right. My ad­vice to Sam­my and his boys is to frus­trate the Eng­land team in­to mak­ing mis­takes, the same way they did it to us back in 1990 in the Caribbean. The toss is vi­tal. It was a beau­ti­ful day yes­ter­day and the pitch was un­cov­ered for most of it, but there should be some mois­ture still left when play starts to­day. It is less about our bowlers us­ing the ear­ly-morn­ing mois­ture and more about not let­ting the op­po­si­tion do so, be­cause the re­sult of that could be crip­pling. My sug­ges­tion would be to field first and start the process of tak­ing 20 wick­ets right away.

The Lord's pitch al­so brings more hand­some re­sults for bats­men on the sec­ond and third day. Se­lect one at­tack­ing fast bowler-and my choice would be Ke­mar Roach, who is bowl­ing fast and with more suc­cess than Fi­del Ed­wards at the mo­ment. He should be used in short bursts at key mo­ments in the game to snatch the ad­van­tage.

The cap­tain and Ram­paul should see them­selves as bowlers who could frus­trate the op­pos­ing bats­men by what is fa­mous­ly known as "bowl­ing down the cor­ri­dor of un­cer­tain­ty." A good line and length and a lit­tle move­ment is enough to cause trou­ble to the best of bats­men. I would like to see the spin­ner Shilling­ford play. It will be tough for him, as the Eng­land bat­ting line-up on­ly has two left-han­ders in their top eight, and they are open­ing the in­nings. The va­ri­ety is im­por­tant, and as the game gets in­to the last two days, he may be­come a fac­tor to con­tend with, as the pitch should re­spond to spin more favourably. A good bowl­ing per­for­mance, if we win the toss and choose to bat, could take some pres­sure off the bats­men and could al­ter the Eng­lish plans. Bat­ting first or sec­ond, the West In­dies need to have a plan against such an ex­pe­ri­enced and high­ly ef­fec­tive bowl­ing at­tack. I will get straight to the point: Take the field­ers in the slip cor­don out of the game. Play at balls be­tween wick­et and wick­et un­til you're sure you can step out­side of that with au­thor­i­ty. Ear­li­er on, I said I don't fan­cy go­ing in­to the play­ers' dress­ing room-but if I'm al­lowed, I will be the first man there to con­grat­u­late the boys if we can pull off a sur­prise vic­to­ry, or even a draw- once it's not achieved thanks to the bad weath­er pre­vail­ing in Eng­land at the mo­ment.