You can't talk West Indies batting within the present day era without citing the names of Sir Vivian Richards and Brian Lara. I grew up looking Richards murder bowling assaults, chewing his ever-gift gum with a swagger and arrogance all his personal.
West Indian cricket has been a adventure of thrills, fun, brilliant peaks and disappointing troughs. For a team shackled with the load of a heroic beyond, impeded in its improvement with the aid of wrangling within its cricket board, Brian Charles Lara has stood out and stood tall as one of the finest batsmen the arena has seen.
To an observer who isn't always West Indian, the Caribbean mind-set is a strange one. Where maximum people display big emotion whilst confronted with challenges, many West Indian players infrequently appear to exchange expression - whether they have got won or lost, scored a duck or a hundred. This secure, laidback attitude, which has unfairly drawn large complaint for being flawed to the pursuit of relentless success as styled via the Australians, has, but, succeeded in generating a number of the maximum flexible and entire cricketers to have ever played the sport. And this is precisely what Brian is: flexible and complete.
Like all outstanding batsmen he has scored runs in every corner of the cricketing global in opposition to all of the first-class assaults. What sets Brian aside from the opposite greats is the manner and mind-set in which he wields the willow. There is panache; there may be flamboyance, unpredictability, periods of regular brilliance, and inexplicable runs of horrific shape. Never one to were praised as a true crew man, he unmarried-handedly shouldered the weight of carrying West Indies' batting through a decade.
I were unlucky sufficient as a Sri Lanka cricketer to have witnessed him at his quality at close quarters. The West Indian tour to Sri Lanka in November 2001 turned into The Brian Lara Show. In just six innings he scored 688 runs at 114.66, with 3 hundreds and a fifty. He did so at a time while Muttiah Muralitharan and Chaminda Vaas were at their lethal exceptional on Sri Lankan pitches that had bite, leap, flip and opposite swing. Yet West Indies nevertheless misplaced 0-3.
Brian's approach and fashion aren't orthodox. Though he begins with a fantastically balanced stance, he progresses right into a flamboyant and outrageously high again-lift that might be a training e book no-no. His initial motion appears to be a spilt step-jump that flings his frame into the position required to play his shots. Although unorthodox, those moves, coupled with a exquisite eye or even better fingers, allow him to generate high-quality bat velocity and power at the moment of impact. His occasionally extravagant follow-thru is the result of this bat pace. Many are the instances when, though his feet are nowhere close to the required position they ought to be in to play a shot, the correctness of his balance and head position frees his fingers and lets in them to trap up with the ball at the exact right second.
He is also the most negative participant of spin I actually have seen. To my thoughts he's the handiest batsman to have effectively tamed the chance of Murali and dominated him and Shane Warne. Brian has all the clichรฉ attributes of a excellent player of spin: an amazing eye, quick ft, the capacity to examine from the hand, and an attacking attitude, blended with the maximum strong of ahead defences. But to my thoughts what without a doubt sets him aside and makes him this sort of high-quality player of spin, better than the relaxation, is that he isn't content to react to the bowler. He continues challenging himself inside the middle of an innings to take advantage of the only vicinity of the field the bowler needs him to exploit. I actually have visible Murali flip the ball rectangular throughout him, with out a midwicket, engaging him to play against the turn, and I actually have visible Brian keep riding, flicking and sweeping into that one vacant spot. Doing it once or twice is comprehensible, however to watch him do it for an entire session, it made you raise your eyebrows in amazement and surprise.
His nemesis in global cricket for a long term become Glenn McGrath, whose fulfillment in opposition to Brian became based totally on his potential to take advantage of the attitude of bowling across the wicket. When Glenn got here around the wicket to Brian it was nearly a given that he might side to slip. This changed into a remember of warm debate in our dressing room: many are the instances we've attempted to copy the method, many are the instances I actually have watched different groups try and accomplish that, both and not using a wonderful endured achievement.
So the query remains: become it virtually the one technical chink in Brian's armour or changed into it McGrath's unique capability? Murali, trying an answer, in his personal direct and engagingly blunt style asked Brian himself when we have been having dinner together at Mahaweli Reach in Kandy once. "Brian," Murali stated, "why are you getting out all the time to McGrath?" Brian's solution was: "Murali, I should get out one way or the other, and if I get out to McGrath, so what, it does now not hassle me." He virtually did not trust there has been a hassle.
This became a character trait that helped make Brian so a hit. The scenario of a fit did now not appear to hassle him - the strain, the expectancies, his form; it simply didn¹t appear to prey on his mind. Brian played as though for the moment. Each ball a clean begin, every stroke unhindered by way of the immediate past. He usually believed that his ability might triumph. It is a degree of self-focus and self-self assurance this is extremely hard to attain.
Maybe it become this, too, that undermined his effectiveness as a leader and allowed the notion to develop that he changed into not usually a total team man. I cannot make certain this become the case, now not having shared a dressing room with him. I query whether or not being a lot higher than the rest made it hard for him to relate properly to the lesser gamers inside the team. Although he was without a doubt an astute and wise captain, he struggled to get full team cooperation and respect. It is hard to drag a team alongside that doesn't completely agree with in you.
One query mark I actually have in my mind approximately Brian is: why the terrible intervals? He became remarkable, however he can also be inconsistent. On music, unstoppable; but there have been times when he struggled badly. Technically he failed to alternate all that a lot via his profession. It could simply be that he could not synchronise his lower back-raise and exaggerated trigger movement. He needed rhythm as a batsman.
If you investigate his achievements, he undisputedly ranks on the very pinnacle - 501 in excellent cricket for Warwickshire, 375 not out after which 400 now not out in Test cricket; the very best run-scorer in international cricket for years till Tendulkar pipped him recently. That he performed most of those feats whilst the competition was swarming throughout his crew is first-rate.
I consider even higher the 1998-99 series, which Australia could have won 4-zero were it no longer for Lara's monumental 213 inside the second Test, and his unbeaten 153 within the third - the latter definitely as right an innings as absolutely everyone has ever performed. The Test become carried out and dusted, West Indies five down and 203 brief of victory, while Lara yet again made up his mind: Australia have to lose. And in order that they did, with the aid of one wicket, following a display of batsmanship so breathtaking it changed into definitely symphonic. A mighty Australian team drew the collection 2-2 with a feeble West Indian facet, merely because of Lara's unrivaled ability to heave the entire group onto his shoulders and drag them in the direction of the mild. And sitting at home in Sydney, bleary-eyed and exhausted after staying up all night time with the radio for organisation, I seethed at this up-himself little aristocrat's denial of the entire domination that Australia surely deserved after the humiliations of the '80s. If there was one thing Lara specialised in, it changed into denying Australians their complete measure of pleasure. He wouldn't even allow an Australian keep his global record for more than six months, topping Matthew Hayden's 380 together with his own 400 not out earlier than we might even had a hazard to experience it.
However, possibly the real price of Brian changed into his leisure energy. Whatever he did on the sphere he did with style and style. He became no longer just a cricketer, he turned into a performer. There had been many top notch players, however few with the same capacity to thrill a crowd. With Brian batting, the document books have been continuously threatened. Every sport had the ability to produce something outstanding. When he turned into batting well, there was no greater sight in global cricket.
Captain of the Sri Lanka cricket team