I am not sure what "Lara smashes a century" even means. Are we talking about vandalizing a Buick?

The present tense is more immediate and slightly more exciting. The headline is meant to grab the reader's attention and maybe even sell a newspaper, so it is a bit of a sales gimmick. It does sound a bit more ho-hum to write "Lance Armstrong won seventh Tour de France" than to say it in the present tense. But the article itself is usually in the past tense. The article that accompanies the headline "Billy Preston dies" probably begins with the sentence "Billy preston died yesterday at...."

For some stories, the present tense is applicable because the event is actually ongoing. For example, if I were to write a news story about a sports player breaking a record in say, most consecutive games played, I might say "Joe Schmoe breaks record for consecutive games played." In this case, the ongoing effort of playing in consecutive games continues, and the record continues to change as the season progresses. The present tense conveys that a little bit better than the past tense, which seems to focus soley on the moment that the previous record was broken.