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Larky Lara does a
bearded Border |
A
tribute on Brian Lara for becoming the leading
run getter in Test Cricket by B.V.Swagath and
Rakesh Kumar Srivastava, published on Nov
28, 2005
 Some
people just can't be written off even if they
keep on failing for some time in their career
and that’s because somewhere down the line you
can always expect those characters to come up
with something out of the world to shut their
critics. And perfect examples for these kinds of
characters are Sachin Tendulkar and one
Trinidadian Brian Charles Lara. If Sachin is the
leading run getter in One Day Cricket then the
leading run getter in Tests record is with Brian
Lara. The feat had just been achieved by Lara on
the 26th of November, 2005 at the Adelaide Oval
as the left hander took a single off Glenn
McGrath to surpass
another left hander Allan Border’s 11174 Test
runs. Sachin the right handed maestro and
Lara the left handed maestro both have scored
20000 plus runs in both formats of International
Cricket.
The real thing about Great Batsmanship is the
ability to dominate all bowling attacks pace or
spin, swing or seam on different wicket
conditions and not just dominate but make their
innings count for their sides. Brian Lara is one
batsman who looks very complicated in his
technique, budding cricketers hardly get to
understand the reasons for his shuffling across
the stumps or the way he hops when he gets onto
his backfoot to the quicks. When he’s struggling
for runs his movements look so jerky but it’s
not so when he’s in flow with those booming
drives and the ferocious cuts and pull shots.
All these played with sheer arrogance and it’s
the sound of those thunderous strokes that puts
off many bowlers.
The greatest sights in world cricket along with
Sachin’s trademark on drives is Lara’s lofted
shot which is to dance down the track to
spinners and send the cricket ball miles and
miles in the air and make the cricket ball look
like a small dot that disappears out of the
ground like a comet. Very few can match the
confidence and arrogance of this left hander who
even wears sunglasses while batting giving a
damn to the best of the best bowlers. Two things
in which Lara easily edges out Sachin is the
amount of big scores he notches up although
Sachin of late has been making his Test
centuries into some real big ones but not as big
as the 400* or the 375 made by Brian. Second
thing to note about Lara is that he has seen his
side clinch some famous wins both in Tests and
ODIs all on his own single handedly. This has
always been the criticizing point of Tendulkar.
However in Tendulkar’s favour is the fact that
he has easily been the consistent scorer amongst
the two for many years because Lara has always
been a flashy batsman.
Brian Lara is history’s most successful
cricketer. Apart from being the leading run
getter in Tests, he also holds the world record
of highest individual innings in Tests with an
unbeaten 400 at St.John’s against England in
2004. Lara is only the second batsman in Test
cricket history to score two triple hundreds
after Australia’s Don Bradman. However Lara is
the only one to post 350-plus scores on two
occasions. The highest individual first class
score is also treasured by Lara when he had
blasted 501 for Warwickshire against Durham at
Birmingham in 1994. There is another record that
he owns in Test Cricket and that is for scoring
most runs in a single over. South Africa’s Robin
Peterson, the left arm spinner was the hapless
bowler who was whacked for 28 runs in one over
by Lara at the Wanderers in Johannesburg in
2003/04.
Some where in the Bible it is written, ‘uneasy
lies the head that wears a crown’ and if the
holy gem fits anyone in West Indies cricket, it
is Brian Lara. Here are some telling statistics.
Brian Lara made his Test debut against Pakistan
at Lahore in 1990-91. He was dubbed a batting
prodigy in his early teens, serenaded as a
batting genius at age 23 and hailed as the
world’s best batsman at age 24. In the first
twelve years of his career, Lara scored 18 Test
centuries, including the magnificent 277 against
Australia (his first century) and the then world
record score of 375 against England at St.John’s,
Antigua. With 31 Test hundreds some of them
being huge, many West Indians today consider the
36-years–old Lara a disappointment. Why? Former
Windies keeper Ridley Jacobs insists that Lara
is a disruptive influence on the side and that
the team would be better off with out him. Some
have suggested that the presence of Lara tends
to makes other batsmen abdicate their
responsibilities. Some also feel that Lara’s is
such an overwhelming presence that lesser
batsmen suffer a crisis of confidence in batting
alongside him.
Lara’s sin as a batsman is not that he has not
produced. So much is expected of him always. The
world-records holder, the batting genius, has
been on his own, there has been no one
consistently to share his burden and because of
that his people demand a greater level of
consistency from Lara. Time waits for none and
with Lara at 36 years we might just be seeing
the beginning of the last phase of this great
entertainer’s career. Let’s hope for Cricket’s
sake that the left hander produces few more
magical knocks before calling it quits and just
waiting for some one to come up in world cricket
and play like what Lara has for the next ten
years!
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