Cricket: Lara casts long shadow

Brian Lara might be in "da house", but New Zealand are refusing to worry about his presence until after today's final one-day international at Eden Park.

The West Indian batting legend arrived yesterday with fellow test specialists Devon Smith and Daren Powell, but will be reduced to spectator status today as New Zealand attempt to win the ODI series 5-0.

New Zealand skipper Stephen Fleming is in no doubt about the impact Lara will have on the touring party, but said yesterday that his team's first priority was to win today's game and complete the clean sweep.

"We were good enough to do it against the West Indies in 1999, and to have a chance of repeating it this year is a real motivating factor.

"The test may be in the back of players' minds, but as a team it's all been about winning five-nil, which would be a great achievement. To be honest, I think that's what the country is demanding."

However, he believed the mere presence of Lara would act as a spur for the embattled West Indies, and said New Zealand would have to maintain intense concentration to win.

Lara made himself unavailable for the one-day part of the tour in the interests of extending his career as long as possible, and the West Indies have looked clueless without him.

Comprehensively outplayed in the first and fourth one-dayers, they should have won the second and third games after placing themselves in match-winning positions, results that would have left the series locked at 2-2.

"If you're going to cling to somebody, he's probably the best man for the job," said Fleming. "He's a great player and whenever you have great players joining your tour it's always going to provide a boost.

"He'll give them confidence and he'll give them runs. Somewhere on this tour he's going to score heavily. We accept that and, to be honest, we've budgeted for it.

"We'll apply pressure and hope that it doesn't happen, but the other batters will feed off him and he'll lead the batting line-up, which is something they've missed so far."

Lara proved something of an anti-climax in the 1999 tour of New Zealand, often perishing in impatient fashion after becoming frustrated by the home side's bowling attack.

All the signs point towards a similar strategy to cope with him this month, although Fleming said he doubted the West Indian left-hander would be too worried about a payback performance.

"He's not the sort of guy who makes bold statements or predictions, he just goes about his work and slowly takes you apart. He doesn't try to be larger than life, he keeps to himself and I don't expect to hear much from him. But he'll be working hard on his game, there's no doubt about that."

As for today's contest, Fleming said his first concern would be over the condition of the drop-in pitch, which had proved a tad inconsistent in recent Auckland one-dayers.

"This pitch can be a bit tricky," he said. "I'll be very interested in how it plays and how good we are at adapting to it ... in recent times we've been poor."

However, he believed the West Indies would be hurting dreadfully from their effort so far, and would be struggling to escape the feeling that, no matter how well they played, it would always end up turning to custard.

"I don't think they can be in a great [head] space; you can't be when you're on tour and you're 4-nil down. From our point of view, it doesn't matter how close we get [to losing], we always feel that you're going to get across the line.

"The opposite happens when you're losing. It doesn't matter how strong your position, you always imagine that you're going to chuck it away somehow."

Last night Daniel Vettori was omitted from the squad of 13 in another precautionary move before the test series begins next week.


Fifth ODI

NZ v West Indies
Eden Park, 2pm today

New Zealand: Lou Vincent, Stephen Fleming (captain), Nathan Astle, Peter Fulton, Hamish Marshall, Scott Styris, Ross Taylor, Brendon McCullum, Kyle Mills, Shane Bond, James Franklin, Jeetan Patel.

West Indies: Shivnarine Chanderpaul (captain), Chris Gayle, Darren Ganga, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Runako Morton, Darren Smith, Denesh Ramdin, Wavell Hinds, Dwayne Bravo, Ian Bradshaw, Deighton Butler, Fidel Edwards, Rawl Lewis, Jerome Taylor.