The Windies attack of that time lacked the teeth required to demolish a strong England batting lineup. They failed to do so in the previous tests of the series and none can blame Lara for thinking that it might happen again. While I think that he batted just a bit longer that he ideally would have if he was not nearing 400, I think I would have done the same if I had been in his shoes. Furthermore, it was just the first innings of the match so it was obviously and it was not that WI would be tearing the Poms apart to register a win given our weak bowling attack. What I really think is Lara, while keep his personal milestone in mind in the latter part of the innings went for the survival instinct -- that to be safe and to be honest, even a draw at that time was a great confidence booster. A win would have been the best of course. Also, if you take a close look at the scorecard you will realize he played at a strike rate of almost 70 (68.72 to be precise) so I do not think he dragged it for about another 100 runs after scoring a triple. That said, on any other day with 400 not in the radar, I think he would have declared when the team total went past 700 run mark but 50 odd runs does not make a huge difference in a match like that, do they. I mean England still had 5 wickets in the bag in the second innings. There was not much chance we would have won even if Lara would have declared, say 10-15 overs earlier.
