ISSN: 1391 - 0531
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Vol. 41 - No 47
Sports

Lara bids adieu

End of another great era

By Aubrey Kuruppu

Way back in the 1980s, Sir Gary Sobers was asked by a fellow West Indian test player to take a look at a youngster from Trinidad who was something special. Sobers duly did so and was immediately struck by the lad’s love of batting, the fact that he didn’t throw his hand away and by his approach, his eagerness to take advantage of the loose and even the half loose deliveries.

West Indies Captain Brian Lara looks on from the players Pavilion during the match against Bangladesh in the Super-Eight ICC World Cup at the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown Barbados. -AFP

The lad, Brian Lara was to make his first class debut two years later at 19 against the Leeward Islands at Pointe-a-Pierre in 1988. His entry into the test team (Lahore 1990) and the one day side (Karachi 1990) was probably delayed by the success of the Caribbean teams of the time. This success masked the continued failures of some middle order batsmen.

His first test hundred took three years and when it came it was a monumental effort. Lara, a little immodestly, refers to his 277 run out at Sydney in January 1993 as a “gem”. Lara rates this 372 ball, 38 boundary innings as the one he would like most to replay on account of the context of the innings, the quality of the stroke play and the role it played in the eventual outcome of the series.

St John’s Antigua 14 months later (April 1994) and the phenomenal left hander played the innings that changed his life. He eclipsed his mentors world second 365 with 375 (538 balls, 45 fours) against the English trundles whose bowling he feasted on many a time. Lara turns the knock overwhelming and unbelievable. The upshot of these heroics was that he became the standard bearer for cricket, the batsman that every one looked up to and aspired to be.

Forty nine days later, the test record holder played an epic innings of 501 not out for Warwickshire against Durham at Edgbaston to claim the record for the highest first class score. Move over Hanif Mohamed who had made 499 for Karachi against Bahawalpar thirty five years earlier.

Trevor Penney, who partnered Lara during a partnership of 314, was only able to make 44. His comment “batting with Lara gives you an inferiority complex” says it all.

Lara’s record of 375 was briefly stolen from him by Hayden who made 380 against a hapless Zimbabwe side. However the master quickly put that to right by going on to make 400 against (you guessed it) England, once more.

Centuries have cascaded from his bat in both forms of the game all over the world. Lara enjoyed a tremendous three test series against Sri Lanka, charming his way to hundreds in both Colombo and Kandy. His duels with the spin ace, Muralitharan were the stuff of dreams. His flicked shots through mid-wicket, and against the spin, mesmerized the magician himself. Forced to play second fiddle, Murali duly acknowledged Lara’s mastery.

His soul-stirring double hundreds on home soil against Steve Waugh’s Australians were the source of wonder and amazement. The fact that these masterpieces helped his team to his back in the services made these successes all the sweeter.

The fact that he has not played in a World Cup winning side is by no means a blot on the escutcheon. There were hopes prior to the 9th edition of the World Cup that the cavaliers from the Caribbean would break the hoodoo that usually overtakes the hosts. Lara’s men failed spectacularly and the great man himself had a very ordinary tournament.

Final judgement on Lara’s genius should not be mixed up with his seeming inability to lift his team from its bootstraps. Aid not Worrel has the likes of Sobers, Kanhai, Gibbs, Griffith and Hall? Lloyd was able to decimate the opposition as he had mean, fast bowlers coming off the assembly line. He also had the likes of Richards, Haynes, Greenidge and Kallicharan besides himself.

By contrast whom did Lara have to deliver the knock-out blows, to decapitate the opposition? The meek may inherit the earth but they don’t win you world Cups.

The Aura, the charisma that was part of the Lara persona will never be seen again with the passage of time he could be just another West Indian great. Thanks for the memories, Brian.

Profile

Full Name: Brian Charles Lara

Born: 5/2/1969

Place: Cantaro, Santa Cruz, Trinidad

Major teams West Indies, ICC World XI, Trinidad & Tobago, Northern Transvaal, Warwickshire

Batting style: Left-hand bat

Bowling style: Legbreak googly

Test debut: Pakistan v West Indies at Lahore - Dec 6-11, 1990

ODI debut: Pakistan v West Indies at Karachi - Nov 9, 1990

Achievements: Wisden Cricketer of the Year 1995 BBC Sports Personality of the Year-Overseas Personality, since 1994 Lara was ranked the number one batsman in Test cricket in the PricewaterhouseCoopers Cricket Ratings several times for comfortably averaging over 50 per innings (the benchmark for batting greatness in Test cricket).

Lara`s maiden Test century was against Australia where he hit 277 runs, the fourth highest maiden Test century by any batsman, the highest individual score in all Tests between the two teams and the fourth-highest century ever recorded against Australia by any Test batsman.

After Matthew Hayden had eclipsed his Test record for highest individual score of 375 by five runs in 2003, he reclaimed the record scoring 400 not out in 2004 against England.

He is the all-time leading run scorer in Test cricket 11,953 runs, a record he attained on 26 November 2005, breaching Allan Border’s 11,174 run mark.

He is only the second batsman to score 1000 Test runs in five different years, four days after Matthew Hayden first set the record.

He was the fastest batsman to score 10,000 (with Sachin Tendulkar) and 11,000 Test runs, in terms of number of innings. He has scored 34 centuries. He has the most centuries for a West Indian and second most for all Test cricket.

Nine of his centuries are double centuries (surpassed only by Donald Bradman) Two of them are triple-centuries (matched only by Bradman).
He has scored centuries against all Test-playing nations. He achieved this feat in 2005 by scoring his first Test century against Pakistan at the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown, Barbados.

He became only the sixth batsman to speed from 0 to a 100 in one session, doing so against Pakistan on 21 November 2006. Lara has scored an astonishing 20% of his team runs, a feat surpassed only by Bradman (23%) and George Headley (21%). Lara scored 688 runs (42% of team output, a record for a series of three or more Tests, and the second highest aggregate runs in history for a three-Test series) in the 2001-02 tour of Sri Lanka.

He also scored a century and a double century in the third Test in that same Sri Lanka tour, a feat repeated only five other times in Test cricket history.

Lara holds the world record of scoring most runs in a single over (28 runs against left-arm spinner RJ Peterson of South Africa) in Test cricket. He also scored 26 runs in a single over off the bowling of Danish Kaneria at Multan Cricket Stadium on 21 November 2006.

With 162 catches, He is second all-time in the category of most catches in a career by a non-Wicketkeeper, behind Mark Waugh.

 

 
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