Cricket: Richards offers to mediate in Lara dispute

Viv Richards has come to his country's rescue once or twice before and has offered his services again to help settle the dispute between the batsman Brian Lara and the West Indies cricket officials.

Lara pulled out of the current tour of Australia at the last minute after being fined, with three other players, by the West Indies Cricket Board of Control for misconduct during this year's tour of England.

"I carry no weight with the board, but I am so dismayed by the affair that, here and now, I volunteer to mediate in an attempt to get a batsman better than I ever was, back on track to help West Indies mount a serious challenge for the 1996 World Cup - they need only to pick up the phone," Richards, the former captain of West Indies, said yesterday.

Lara withdrew from the tour of Australia apparently because he was upset at being penalised for an incident he was led to believe had been settled by the tour committee in England.