Decoding the Lara legend - What makes him a standout icon?

For as long as he batted, and forget not that he batted 32,839 deliveries in International Cricket, Brian Lara exemplified greatness, answered back critics, saved the West Indies, time and again, from dismay, and importantly, offered an ardent answer to why cricket is regarded a batter’s game.

But make no mistake. 

Lara’s wasn’t an easy journey that was being nurtured amid intense love and care or effortless hospitality. There were hardly any off days with the bat that he could afford. For when that did happen, it was usually curtains for the Caribbean team.

Forget not that besides Chanderpaul or occasionally either between Hooper or Adams, there weren’t too many to offer the support that Lara so desperately needed whilst facing the music.

The ‘Prince’, as he’s called, arrived in the sport when a generation of greats - Sir Viv, Gordon Greenidge, Desmond Haynes and Richie Richardson - were phasing out and more or less done with the sport.
 

In that sense, his cricketing career wasn’t blossoming amid some mighty aggregation of greats; the heroes as famously seen in the eighties such as Haynes, Richards, Greenidge, Lloyd, a rip-roaring batting order that attacked opponents like a pack of lions. 

A scene where one was for all and all were for one.

Lara had none of that. Sachin had Dravid and Ganguly and Laxman and Sehwag. Ponting had Gilchrist, the Waugh brothers and Slater. Kallis had Kirsten and Cullinan and later, Klusener. 

But for an enormous part of his career, wherein he collected 430 international caps for the West Indies, Lara fought one alone. 

Much to the distraught of those who challenged him, Brian Lara turned into a predator that horsewhipped West Indian opponents whilst playing the lone warrior. 

As a matter of fact, make no mistake that even those who shouldered the responsibility to grow whatever was left of the West Indies after the glory days (the seventies and eighties) were over departed soon. 

Legends and close friends - Ambrose and Walsh - bid farewell to the game in 2000 and 2001, respectively; towering figures who’d often come to Windies’ rescue whilst offering Lara’s support.

Yet, Lara played the lone hand responsible for flaying bowlers- whether Donald or Pollock, Kallis or Klusener, Kumble or Harbhajan, Wasim or Waqar, Saqlain or Murali, Vaas or Streak. 

And while he did that for a backbreaking and onerous span of seventeen years, he, at least, succeeded in delaying the absolute spiral decline of his West Indian cricket.

There wasn’t much that sided with him anyways, with Campbell or Hinds, Griffith or Barath at the top order and bowlers like Collins, Tino Best, and Collymore handling the seam responsibility. Barring Chanderpaul and later Gayle, there weren’t many Lara could go to for support.

Yet, he stood, many a time, facing overwhelming odds, confronting challenges of the skilled bowlers on the pitch and an administration that was perhaps not the kindest stoked the Lara legend.

Which is why many feel- and rightly so- that each time he had his back to the wall, Lara would bounce back, having also stated much too famously toward the end of his career that, “People come through a lot of turnstiles to watch a game of cricket, I have to try to give them their money’s worth!”

So whether it’s his 116 in the 2003 ODI world cup that badly bit the hosts South Africa, the 1996 World Cup’s classy 111, a signature of elegance that put the Proteas on the first flight back to South Africa, the often under-appreciated 169 in the 1995 ODI against Sri Lanka at Sharjah, or the 156 he hit against Pakistan as a 36-year-old at Adelaide, Lara did his thing in his own fashionable, inimitable style and was often seen patrolling a lone vigil.

Hence, Lara competed in a terse and unfriendly territory that could so easily have dented his confidence and subdued his spirit of competing. 

But for that to have never happened, with the famous Trinidadian journeying on to score a whopping 11,953 Test runs for West Indies, striking 34 Test centuries in all, the most by a West Indian ever, and scoring 688 runs in a 3-match Test series, the second-highest aggregate ever in five-dayer history, Lara personified mental toughness over and above anything else.

So often does it happen that while celebrating his big numbers- whether the 277 v Australia in the 1993 Sydney Test or the 226 at Adelaide Oval in 2006, or even the unbeaten 153 at Barbados, we tend to focus only on the plumage of intoxicatingly beautiful batting features?

The flashing drives, the exaggerated movement on the stumps, the stylish grin, the enthusiasm and that coolness or the high backlift.

Not a lot is reserved for the fuel that powered the caravan; we forget that Lara’s batting was built on the painstaking tedium of focusing for long hours at the crease.

We also tend to forget that the more difficult the circumstances in which he arrived in the middle, the more he challenged himself to outdo his opponents.

That is why he’s also described as a bit of ‘Destiny’s Child.’ 

Someone the heavens above wanted to succeed, the prodigal son, as Tony Cozier called him, who rose above challenges when it seemed all was lost, and doomsday was near.

That is how he hit his 153 not out during the 98-99 series against Australia; with the series also his captaincy on the line. That’s also how his incredible 100 of just 82 deliveries came at Jamaica.

And forget not that even when he thunderstruck the cricketing establishment by hitting a 400 at Antigua, 10 years after losing the world record for highest individual Test score (to Matt Hayden), it was anything but happy days for Lara or the West Indies; the team and its left-handed captain were almost certain to face the ignominy of being whitewashed by the English.

That’s precisely where, having hit rock bottom, having lost both form and appetite for runs, Lara, whose best score prior to arriving at Antigua being 36, walloped the England attack in making cricket’s only quadruple hundred.

Eighteen years have gone by, and none have equalled - if not bettered - Lara’s flamboyant peak, one he hit when nearing retirement; the Trinidadian was soon to turn 35 when he batted for 778 minutes, facing 582 deliveries on the whole.

But much like his world record- and he has others too, the highest individual first-class score of 501- there stands the Lara legend, utterly unconquerable and unsullied by the highs and lows of the game.

Which is why it also makes sense to suggest that where it comes to witnessing all-round greatness in batting, there’s Sachin; where it comes to witnessing technical virtuosity in the game, there’s Mohd. Younus or Dravid, where it comes to evidencing the might of leadership, there’s Waugh and Dhoni, but where it comes to lifting one’s soul whilst batting- there’s only one Brian Lara, the Prince of Trinidad.