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Journalism of Courage
Skipper Brian lara has urged his top-order batsmen to apply themselves in the first 15 overs and give the West Indies the chance of stopping the Australian juggernaut in the Caribbean one-day cricket series.
The World Cup champions extended their unbeaten one-day international sequence to 20 games with a 25-run win over the West Indies in St Lucia on Wednesday and will wrap up the seven-match series with victory in either of this weekend’s matches in Trinidad.
The Windies have lost their last 10 ODIs against Australia, but Lara knows what needs to be done if his team is not to play second-fiddle again to Ricky Ponting’s high-rolling squad.
‘‘In two of the three matches we lost the match in the first 15 overs when we were batting losing that amount of wickets, so us batters up front need to apply ourselves a lot better,’’ Lara said today. ‘‘We should not be losing wickets during that period. ’’
Lara, master batsman that he is, has also to shoulder the blame with poor scores in the opening three matches of 23, 5 and 4. ‘‘Of course, they’ve dominated at least two of the three matches so far and we have to find a way to turn things around,’’ he said. ‘‘We’ve got four matches ahead of us.’’
