ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – Bat­ting leg­end Bri­an Lara has iden­ti­fied the men­tal as­pect as a crit­i­cal area of fo­cus for West In­dies, and be­lieves he can play a sig­nif­i­cant role in strength­en­ing the Caribbean side in this re­gard, as they pre­pare to face In­dia in a two-Test se­ries start­ing on Thurs­day.

The for­mer West In­dies cap­tain is part of the on­go­ing prepa­ra­tion camp which start­ed last Fri­day at the Vi­vian Richards Crick­et Ground, where he has been lend­ing his vast ex­pe­ri­ence to the cadre of young bats­men.

And Lara said while the tech­ni­cal skills and work eth­ic was present in the squad, a key area to ad­dress was the men­tal ap­proach.

“What I’ve seen in the camp is in­tense prac­tice which is good. I think the in­ten­si­ty I’ve seen in this camp is very good. The young play­ers are work­ing hard, Floyd Reifer and his team are ac­tu­al­ly putting things to­geth­er pret­ty good,” the 50-year-old Lara said.

“Where I feel I can make an im­pact is their men­tal ap­proach to the game. I feel as if I was to strike on one thing that I was de­cent at was men­tal­ly where I pre­pared my­self strong­ly and I think some­thing might be miss­ing.

“The prac­ti­cal side is there for the young play­ers but I feel men­tal­ly they can grow a lit­tle bit and learn a lit­tle bit more.”

West In­dies face In­dia in the open­ing Test at the Vi­vian Richards Crick­et Ground, hop­ing their wretched record against the vis­i­tors which has seen them with­out a sin­gle Test win in near­ly two decades.

How­ev­er, they will be hop­ing to build on their suc­cess in their on­ly Test se­ries this year when they stunned world num­ber ones Eng­land 2-1 in a three-Test se­ries in the Caribbean.

Lara, who plun­dered 11, 953 runs from 131 Tests dur­ing an il­lus­tri­ous ca­reer, said that se­ries win was an ex­cel­lent foun­da­tion on which a turn­around could be­gin.

“I de­cid­ed to join the camp sim­ply be­cause I feel this present crop of West In­dies play­ers, es­pe­cial­ly in the Test are­na, is the right group of play­ers,” said Lara, who re­mains the record-hold­er for the high­est Test and first class scores.

“The tal­ent that’s with­in is there. The per­for­mance against Eng­land to win a se­ries at home, I think is the start of some­thing re­al­ly good for us. We must lay the foun­da­tion at home first be­fore we trav­el abroad in for­eign con­di­tions to sort of take com­mand of sit­u­a­tions.”

Lara has been joined in the camp by an­oth­er West In­dies cap­tain and stroke-mak­er, Ramnaresh Sar­wan, who al­so worked with the Windies side ahead of the Ire­land Tri-Na­tions Se­ries in April.

To­geth­er, it is hoped they can in­spire the cur­rent Windies bat­ting group in what will be a dif­fi­cult se­ries against a world class bowl­ing at­tack.

Lara, a for­mi­da­ble op­po­nent dur­ing his play­ing ca­reer, said it was im­por­tant to see the young bats­men de­vel­op their ob­vi­ous po­ten­tial.

“I’m hop­ing that I can im­part some type of knowl­edge, some of my ex­pe­ri­ences in the past to the young bats­men es­pe­cial­ly that we have in the team to see if we can get a lit­tle bit more out of them be­cause it’s nec­es­sary,” he said.

“It’s a good group of young play­ers, we just have to get them think­ing in the right way.”

(CMC)