Australia's desire to win Test matches in quick time makes surpassing Brian Lara's world record score virtually unattainable, Australian skipper Ricky Ponting said yesterday.
Ponting doubts whether Lara's magnificent unbeaten 400, made for the West Indies against England at Antigua last week, will ever be surpassed because few skippers in world cricket would be willing to jeopardize a winning position by allowing one batsman to spend so long at the crease.
Lara's quadruple century -- the first in Test history, eclipsing Matthew Hayden's former world mark of 380 -- was almost 13 hours in the making.
Lara has been criticized for being selfish in chasing the world record until after lunch on the third day of the fourth Test and not leaving enough time for his team to win the match.
"It's hard to imagine an Australian player doing it, just because of the way we play our cricket. It's generally not the way we play," Ponting said.
"I've read some of the reports in the paper over the last couple of days about Lara's innings.
"Their whole first innings might have been geared around one individual performance and they could have let a Test match slip because of it.
"They ran out of time in the game -- that's not the way the Australian team plays."
Matthew Hayden's previous world record 380 against Zimbabwe in Perth last October took just over 10 hours in a match Australia won by an innings and 175 runs early on the fifth day.
Ponting said then captain Steve Waugh's decision to let Hayden keep batting, in an effort to break Lara's previous world record of 375, was the exception to the team rule.
"It was a very rare thing what we did with that Zimbabwean Test match, for Matty to be able to bat for as long as he did and go on and make that big score," Ponting said.
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