Harmison blows out Windies recovery

Cricket Test Match: The rise and rise of Steve Harmison continues unabated. Faced with a fierce West Indian reaction to their defeat in Jamaica, the new celebrity in English cricket responded shortly before lunch with three wickets in eight balls, including that of Brian Lara for a duck, a spell that redressed the early balance to the second Test following a rumbustious century opening stand.

A sequence of heavy rain showers washing in from the forested slopes of the Maraval Hills to the north of Port of Spain kept the players from the field for the first part of the afternoon session. With the board showing 110 for three, and the groundstaff working diligently to remove water from the tarpaulin covers, it meant plenty of opportunity, if they needed reminding, for West Indies to ponder how quickly triumph can turn to disaster.

Neither was there any let up after rain ensured an extended lunch break of two hours. Just 17 balls after the restart Simon Jones forced a loose shot outside offstump from Shivnarine Chanderpaul to give Read his second catch.

Then Harmison struck again, forcing Ramnaresh Sarwan to edge to Flintoff for 21, and he then watched as Nasser Hussain held a catch to see off Dwayne Smith for just 16.

At the end of play West Indies had reached 189 for 8.

For Lara, a four-ball innings was not the homecoming he would have wished or, given his track record of responding positively to adversity, expected. Before the match, he had been exhorting the local fans to Support The Troops, the accusations of inappropriate post-match partying by members of the losing team at Sabina Park still fresh in the mind, if the letters pages of the Trinidad newspapers are any guide.

Now, with the lunch gong pending, he found himself walking to the crease, blinking in the light as if just emerging from a cellar, to face Harmison, who was in the second over of a new spell, and bowling now from the southern pavilion end of the ground. He allowed the first ball to strike his pads - close to being a misjudgment, the ball not quite having the movement into the stumps that had just seen Devon Smith, a rare West Indian batting success in Jamaica, leg before wicket.

The next two were each drifting down legside when they too struck pad as he flicked away. No runs. The penultimate ball of the session was short, and, on a pitch showing Jeckyll and Hyde signs of being two-paced, came on to the batsman before he was ready.

Instinctively Lara fended, the ball flicked his glove, clattered on to his helmet and rebounded in a nice parabola to Ashley Giles in the gully.

West Indies opening partnership at least got his team off to a flying start. The early exchanges with the new ball, that brought maiden overs for both Matthew Hoggard and Harmison, were merely a prelude to batting that, for the 104 minutes that the opening partnership lasted, produced the sort of pyrotechnics of which West Indian cricketers, peculiarly, are capable.

• Yasir Hameed helped steer Pakistan to a four-wicket win over India in the third match of their one-day series in Peshawar yesterday. The hosts now take a 2-1 lead in the series, with Yasir's contribution of 98 runs in front of his home crowd also earning him the man of the match award.

India had earlier set a target of 245, thanks in part to a score of 65 from Yuvraj Singh.

Guardian Service