Lara the batting legend

BRIAN LARA, born May 2, 1969, was a genius with the willow, a left-handed legend the likes of whom grace the world once in a generation.

It has not been that long since Brian Lara’s majestic willow stopped etching those majestic arcs from the high back lift to flourishing follow-throughs.The image of the bent knee and the body and bat coiled like a spring are still fresh in memory, as are the flashes of energy bursting forth, the sound of willow against leather like the pop of the champagne cork, strokes gushing out in liquid grace, flowing in red streaks across the field to the boundary.

No man in world cricket made batting look so sublime, so indelibly stamped with genius. If Sachin Tendulkar’s mastery was sculpted by layers of prodigious inspiration built on a platform of the soundest edicts of batsmanship, Brian Lara more or less wrote his own training manuals. With Tendulkar and Ricky Ponting, the basics of their craft could be at least imitated by mortals, although the results and consistency would be way beyond the realm of lesser men. However, when it came to Lara, even efforts at mirroring were beyond the best of them. The twinkling of the toes as he went down to meet the ball, the pull played with a straight bat with both feet off the ground, the angled bat finding gaps through the off side again and again and again. When the man himself advised Ramnaresh Sarwan to ‘Just watch how I do it’, even the undoubted credentials of the other Guyanese batsman failed to do so.

No willow in modern times dripped with as much genius as Lara’s. And never has the word genius been more accompanied by the often-associated adjective — ‘flawed’.

Yes, when Lara was in full flow, it ended in a deluge of runs, cascading along with unrestrained primal beauty like the highest mountain waterfalls. But, sudden plummets saw him stagnating in murky plebeian puddles for way too long. His spates of run-making could denude the entire landscape of cricket, but quite often it was reduced to a trickle by clogging problems created through rifts with administrators, sponsors, teammates and even with his own self. Throughout his career, Lara battled within a team that increasingly became a shadow of their glorious past. He piled on more and more runs and West Indies kept losing. Once in a while his bat inspired them to epic wins, but that – while always on the surface of remarkable memory — happened very rarely.And all the while he plundered over 23,000 runs in international cricket, with 53 centuries, notching the world record for highest individual score in Tests, reclaiming his record, scripting the first ever 500 in First-Class cricket and finally retiring as the record holder for highest aggregate in Test cricket.

Lara was in many ways a supreme example of how this noble game combines individual heroics within the periphery of team tussle as no other.

THE YOUNG MASTER

Tenth and penultimate of his siblings, Lara perhaps learnt the ways of a functioning eleven pretty early in his life. His introduction to cricket also happened soon enough. He was enrolled at the Harvard Coaching Clinic at the age of six.

Like most versatile sportsmen he excelled in multiple fields, playing football and table tennis for the junior Trinidad sides. Luckily for us, cricket won through.

One of the lasting memories of Lara is during the World Cup quarter-final of 1996 at Karachi against South Africa. Before the match, there had been the controversies. West Indies had been humiliated by Kenya and Lara, dismissed cheaply, had courted controversy by saying that he was happier losing to a team of blacks rather than a team of whites.

In this game, Lara made amends. With Pollock running in early in the innings, his famous bat had come down with that guillotine like flourish, and had met a ball a wee bit shorter than expected. The committed drive, if unleashed, would have flown to the hands of the cover. And there the genius did shine through. The wrists had rolled over the stroke and the dampened flourish had sent the ball trickling in front of the wicket. Did the youthful days of table-tennis play a part? Perhaps, if one dares to dissect genius. Lara had gone on to score 111 of the very best from 94 balls and South Africa had perished by 19 runs.

When Lara was 14, he made 745 runs at 126.16 in the school league. This pitchforked him into the Trinidad and Tobago Under-16 team. A year later he made his way into the West Indies Under-19 side.

In 1990, aged 20, Lara became the youngest captain of Trinidad and Tobago, and led them to victory in the Geddes Grant Shield. In the same year, he toured Pakistan, making his ODI (One Day International) debut at Karachi and playing his first Test at Lahore. Neither outing was overwhelmingly successful.

Waqar Younis trapped him leg-before for 11 at Karachi. In the third Test, when he replaced Carlisle Best in the West Indian team, Lara made 44 and five in a drawn encounter.

THE SPATE OF HUGE SCORES

For the first few years, his place in the side was not secure, with Keith Arthurton often preferred over him. However, all that became history with his first century at Sydney in 1993. The innings was a sizzling 277, the fourth-highest maiden century in Test cricket, considered by many to be the best ever knock played by a visiting batsman in Australia. It also provided a preview of Lara’s immense reserves for accumulating huge scores. Lara himself considered this the best innings of his career, and as a result, when his daughter was born in 1996, she was named Sydney.

The next year, he scripted history at Antigua, going past Garry Sobers’ 36-year world record score of 365 not out. Lara punished the English attack for 375 as West Indies plundered 593 in the first innings of the drawn Test. Lara remarked that since he was just 24, he would try and beat his record, and also continue to live a simple life. Well, he succeeded in keeping the first part of the promise.

Less than two months later, in the summer of 1994, Lara scaled another unprecedented peak in the history of run-making, amassing 501 for Warwickshire against Durham. Dennis Amiss recalled, “I was the Chief Executive at Edgbaston when Lara played that innings. I was busy with something and when I looked up he was on 100. I became busy again, and the next time I looked up he was past 200. I looked down again and up again, and he was past 300. I said to myself that this was something special and better to see the whole thing through.”

CAPTAINCY, PEAKS AND TROUGHS

When Courtney Walsh was sidelined due to a pulled hamstring during the series against India in 1997, Lara captained West Indies for the first time at Barbados. It was a nail-biting affair, and Lara made a crucial 45 in the second innings as West Indies set India a paltry target of 120.

The West Indian fast bowlers took advantage of a terrible pitch and the hosts won by 38 runs. One of the eye-catching tactics employed by Lara, which he would repeat often enough during the early days of his captaincy, was to use his two spearhead pacemen from the same end, in alternate bursts of one over each. The mature and refined cricket brain was there for all to see. Unfortunately, over the years, he seldom had the resources to marshal on the cricket field.

Starting from 1995-96, Lara entered a prolonged period of mediocrity. The torrent of runs seen in his initial years had been reduced to occasional oozings. There was a period of captaincy, largely unsuccessful and in some respects disastrous. A win against England was followed by 5-0 decimation in South Africa. When in 1999 the first Test against the Australians at St Clair ended in defeat, Lara was under pressure as captain and batsman. Apart from the recurrent losses, he had also not scored a century for almost two years. However, in the second Test, the wheel of fortune turned as he scored 213 in a 10-wicket victory.

The next Test at Bridgetown saw what is considered by many to be the greatest innings of his career. West Indies slumped to 105/5 after being set 308 to win on a difficult pitch.

Lara batted brilliantly the tail, adding 53 for the ninth wicket with Curtly Ambrose and scripted an epic victory with Courtney Walsh holding fort at the other end. He finished unbeaten on 153 in a spectacular one-wicket victory.

Yet, the inconsistency in his run-making was resumed soon enough, not helped by losses to New Zealand which ended his first stint as captain. A hamstring injury also constrained his style, adding to his batting owes.

However, once Garry Sobers had suggested a tweak in his huge backlift, Lara started out on another dream phase of his career from late 2001.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

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