Lara's Fragile Troupe Take a Painful Flick From England's Tail

As gaffes go it did not quite fall into the class of accusing England of lacking a Plan B but on Thursday evening Brian Lara made one of those remarks that invites egg on to the face.

"We've rolled the England lower order quite comfortably on most occasions in this series," he said. The way things have gone for West Indies this summer, one knew what was going to happen.

For torture, only the dropped dolly catch rivals a tailend fightback for the fielding captain. Yesterday Lara was placed squarely on the rack and stretched to breaking point.

The galling thing for West Indies was that they had done the hard part by removing Geraint Jones and Andrew Flintoff in the first four overs of the day. With only Ashley Giles and the fast bowlers to come the end of the innings looked nigh and West Indian thoughts turned to chasing down a total of around 350.

What followed was a ruthless summation of the difference between these sides and that was before West Indies collapsed in the final session.

Tot up the batting averages of Giles, Matthew Hoggard, Steve Harmison and James Anderson before yesterday and it came to 54. But factor in England's apparent invincibility and West Indies' all too obvious vulnerability and it is all rather different. The quartet managed 138 between them and only Anderson, with 12, failed to equal or pass his Test best.

Five years ago at this same ground England had fielded a bottom three of Alan Mullally, Ed Giddins and Phil Tufnell, which meant a round-robin game of paper, stone and scissors to establish the No11. But rabbits have no place in Duncan Fletcher's England, and these days the gruelling net sessions are not the preserve of the batsmen alone.

Giles got things going with meaty drives, before Hoggard surprised everyone by timing a drive to the extra-cover fence. The 50 stand came up in 58 balls and West Indies fell to pieces, dropping three catches in three successive Jermaine Lawson overs.

Giles fell for 52, which equalled his Test best, before Hoggard went for 38, which was his best score in all first-class cricket. But for West Indies the worst was yet to come.

In the second Test Harmison battered an unbeaten 31 off 16 balls and he carried on here, wallopping three huge sixes with little more than an extension of those crane-like arms. Even Anderson, one of Test cricket's few remaining genuine No11s, pushed Bravo down the ground for three.

When Anderson leant back to guide Bravo over the slips for four, it was only the third time in 128 years of Test cricket that all 11 England batsmen had reached double figures in the same innings.

It has been that kind of summer. Just when it looks as if there are no more records for England to break, up pops the tail. For Lara the series cannot end quickly enough.