Why The Legend Of Brian Lara Will Always Soar High: A Topic That Really Doesn’t Need Debates!

Modern cricket has often divided fans over a classical question. “Who’s the best batsman after all?”
On its day, this was a question that did let the fans settle, ensuring the discussion continued into the after-hours.

Interestingly, to this day, the debate rages on.

But well before the days of the great AB de Villiers, a time where the quartet of greats- Kohli, Williamson, Root, Smith- had even arrived, there weren’t many contenders actually.

Many rest- and quite understandably so- with Sachin Tendulkar, and that’s to this day.

Hardly surprising, right? But when the “God” himself was asked, he took the name of a certain Trinidadian.

In fact, as recently as a big media event in India, when asked about the one batsman he’d pay to watch, Sachin replied, “Brian Lara!”

To much of the cricket world- Brian Lara is a record-breaker. He is the holder of several records most batsmen would part a limb for. To Harsha Bhogale, the voice of millions and perhaps not only in India, Lara was the one who gave us so much joy on the twenty two yards.

There is the 375, the first when he broke the great Sir Gary Sobers’ record. Then there is the 400. It was and shall be regarded as an inning where he managed to carry his bat, soldiering on for 582 balls,
focusing for 770 plus minutes, it happens to be the highest-individual Test score.

Then there is also the 501, he’d struck at the height of his powers, circa 1993-94 season for Warwickshire against Durham. It remains, as does Cricket’s only quadruple hundred, the highest score achieved by an individual in a single county inning. It’s not that others didn’t near Lara’s hedonist pursuit of massive run making; almost nineteen years since Lara’s peak at Antigua, Glamorgan’s Sam Northeast struck a brilliant unbeaten 410 in July of 2022; but that was that.

Lara’s mountain of runs remains almost as if it’s aloof from its capturers.

Fifteen years have passed on since the construction of the momentous 400 at the Antigua Recreation Ground, the 501 has remained unmoved and hence unbroken for nearly two and a half decades.

If you think of it, then a lot has changed in such time; this being almost 20 years. It’s a period that has brought about significant changes in the sport.

When Lara was still going strong, back in the day, there was no such thing as a T20. From the point of the inception of his grizzly knocks to the present day, many have walked back into the sunset.

The likes of De Villiers, Amla, Steyn, Duminy, Yuvraj, Kaif, Dhoni, McCullum, Clarke, Morkel, Philander, Sanga, Mahela have all become ‘ex-cricketers’.

But the Brian Lara legend continues unaffected, shining bright as the sun’s rays like in a bristling afternoon.

The man who’s turned 54, May 2, 2023, has since then- been inducted into Cricket’s (ICC’s) Hall of Fame, featured in the Road Safety Series in India (that had just begun before the lockdown consumed it in its wake), and even starred in an important globally- watched event in the form of Bushfire match in February of 2020.

Wherever he goes, whatever he does, print interviews, whether the famous “An evening with Brian Lara” event in Australia or come what may, Lara’s name fills crowds akin to bringing in people in stadia at his prime.

Can his style be the only reason for his appeal? We know the massive attention directed at the flashy stance, the whirring blade, the hopping around at the crease, and the majestic but high backlift!

Lara’s presence was that of the ballerina doing the Waltz on the cricketing turf.

Or could it be that implicit in all that Lara did- and we know he achieved mightily- were the fighting-instincts.

True guts. Right?

Brian Lara’s was a fight for glory. The call for redemption!

The 400 came when the West Indies were down and out, facing the ignominy of a whitewash by the English. The left-hander’s highest score before that knock was a dismal 36.

Forget 400, a century didn’t seem in sight. A 5-nil drubbing had happened just days before in South Africa.

Lara’s colossus- the 153 not out during the summers of 1999- came when no one, just no one was in favour of his West Indies to win. After all, just days before the Bridgetown, Barbados Test, his team had been dealt a damning blow.

51 not out read the scorecard at the First Test, at Trindiad.

Which other batsman, it must be asked, was so closely involved and so often responsible for bailing his team out of trouble?

Surely, Dravid’s Wall was constructed later.

Who else was so severely and so often facing the wrath from his own people and not
just the opposition but Brian Lara?

And may that is what made Lara’s achievements so memorable, and his career so savoury and worth respecting. Isn’t it?

That Lara’s greatest peaks, often came against incredible odds- he was due for being stripped off the captaincy in 2004 before 400 saved it all– attached a touch of legend to his incredible journey.

Even when his team were hammered down in Sri Lanka, 2002-03, Lara fired 688 runs from just 3 Tests and in the process, accounted for 40 percent of the team’s runs.

Where else was a man so willing to give everything in the wake of saving his team? For someone whose first cricket bat was shaped out of a coconut tree, the longer Lara wielded the bat in the middle, the more cornered did the teams felt at confronting him.

Brian Lara- the confronter

The sun, he ensured, never set on the team, so long as he was there, soldiering on. And it’s not that the likes of McGrath and Warne, Gillespie and Srinath, Kumble and Murali were the only ones to feel the Lara-heat.

In the latter half of his career, as cricket birthed new fire-breathing monsters, the likes of Shoaib and Lee went on to challenge Brian Lara.

But the blade hadn’t been blunted. The runs didn’t dry out.

A hard-fought century at Trinidad – the incredible 122 in 2003- came with the batting dynamo aged 34.

His last tour to Pakistan, 2006-07, saw the maestro accumulate 448 runs in just five innings. But the better part of those runs was blasted, not actually accumulated.

The image of Lara hunting down Kaneria, hammering Umar Gul over covers and through the stands have since become timeless legends.

And yet, it’s so highly commendable that Lara remained unchanged throughout his career, focusing, fighting on, and being the unrelenting batsman ever in search of runs. As if his wasn’t just hunger but an insatiable craving for runs, as if batting was quite simply second nature to him, and etching match-winning records was usual confrontational habit.

No saint, but someone who horse-whipped bowlers, time and again, in decorating record-books with grandeur, witnessing Lara was often witnessing cricket making love to new peaks of batsmanship.

The essence of Brian Lara

The unifier of the island nations of the Caribbean, the man who bridged the gap between an Australian, Indian, Englishman, or South African uniting them all in the mutual love for that flamboyant batting; cricket’s never been the same post his retirement.

At least, the traditionalists of the nineties and early 2000’s who weren’t yet exposed to the idea of the sport becoming exceedingly commercial thereafter would contend with this thought.

Would they not?

But with Lara in at the crease, cricket appeared larger than life.

All hail Brian Charles Lara- a warrior in the form of a batsman, an eternal fighter for the
West Indies.