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Don’t criticise Brian Lara, he did his best

Mar 13, 2010 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
Just the other day I was having a conversation with some of Guyana’s young and talented cricketers and they just seem to believe that Brian Lara was not good enough for the team thus he should be blamed for their many failures. I disagree strongly.
First, Lara holds several world records for high scoring. He has the highest individual score in both first-class cricket (501 not out for Warwickshire against Durham in 1994) and Test cricket (400 not out for the West Indies against England in 2004). Brian Lara amassed his world record 501 in 474 minutes off only 427 balls. He hit 308 in boundaries (10 sixes and 62 fours). His 400 not out also made him the second player after Don Bradman to score two Test triple-centuries, and the second after Bill Ponsford to score two first-class quadruple-centuries. He has scored nine double centuries in Test cricket, second only to Bradman’s twelve.
Secondly, Lara captained against the touring Australians in 2003, and struck 110 in his first Test match in September 2004. West Indies won the ICC Champions Trophy in England under his captaincy.
Thirdly, Lara in the second Test against South Africa in March 2005 scored a huge first innings score of 196, but in the process lost his captaincy indefinitely to the newly-appointed Shivnarine Chanderpaul. In the next Test, against the same opponents, he scored 176 in the first innings. After a one day series against South Africa, he scored his first Test century against the visiting Pakistanis in the first Test at Kensington Oval, Bridgetown, Barbados.
In addition, he also held the record for the highest total number of runs in a Test career, until Sachin, after overtaking Allan Border in November 2005. He is the only man to have reclaimed the Test record score, having scored 375 against England in 1994, a record that stood until Matthew Hayden’s 380 against Zimbabwe. Lara led the West Indies to successful One-Day series victories against Zimbabwe and India. Lara’s team played Australia in the final for the ICC Champions Trophy and lost.
On 16 December 2006 he became the first player for the West Indies to pass 10,000 One Day International runs – along with Sachin Tendulkar, one of only two players to do so in both forms of the game.
More proof of Lara’s lone-ranger acts – he has scored more than 40% of the team runs on 20 separate occasions. The highest percentage contribution was when he scored 375 out of a team total of 593 – an amazing 63.24% – against England at Antigua in 1993-94.
In all, Lara has scored 20.42% of all runs scored by West Indies in the games he has played for them. To give you an idea of the lack of support he’s had to deal with, the corresponding figure for Viv Richards was 15.23%, for Garry Sobers 16.17%, for Sachin Tendulkar 17.18%, and Inzamam-ul-Haq 16.24%. Lara’s contributions have come almost equally in victories and defeats – 20.05% in wins and 19.82% in losses.
The weak West Indian outfit has also meant that Lara had ended up batting twice in a Test more often than most other batsmen, ensuring that it’s only taken him 121 Tests to get to the mark that took Allan Border 156.
With this, I ask that those who do so, to kindly desist from criticising such a genius who contributed so much to the West Indian team.
Ganesh Mahipaul

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