Blessed with a God-given talent bequeathed to only the chosenfew, Brian Lara became the finest batsman of his time, and one ofthe finest of all time

Tony Cozier22-Feb-2013Blessed with a God-given talent bequeathed to only the chosenfew, Brian Lara became the finest batsman of his time, and one ofthe finest of all time.He created individual scores higher than anyone has ever reachedin either Test or first-class cricket and fashioned innings ofsuch dazzling brilliance they brought applause from even themost cynical of wizened old players.He earned fortune and fame, was accorded his nation’s highesthonour, and was elevated to the most exalted post available toany West Indian cricketer, the captaincy of the Test team.Such is the stuff of which the wildest dreams are made but, forLara, they were repeatedly transformed into the reality ofdreadful nightmares.Now 31, he should be at the height of the exceptional powers thatwere first manifested when he was a boy in short pants at FatimaCollege in Port-of-Spain, in his native Trinidad.Instead, he has been overpowered by the enormous pressures towhich every international celebrity is subjected. They havedrained him of the enthusiasm and the yearning without which noteven the greatest artists can perform. Now he cannot even bringhimself to hold the bat that he had wielded with such devastatingeffect.Lara had the world at his feet when, within six weeks of eachother in 1994, he set the new standards of 375 in a Test againstEngland in Antigua and 501 not out for English county,Warwickshire, against Durham. It was an incredible double andbrought gifts and adulation from his grateful countrymen and fatcontracts from eager sponsors.A friend warned him at the time that his headaches had justbegun. He soon came to realise what he meant. Within a year, ithad all become too much.On the West Indies tour of England in 1995, Lara complained tomanager Wes Hall that ‘cricket is ruining my life’, announced hisretirement and left the team. Only sympahetic persuasion fromthen president of the West Indies Board, Captain Peter Short,influenced him to return, but things would never be the same.Time and again, the mercurial temperament of a genius has beensince exposed with upsetting consequences.He withdrew from the tour of Australia in 1995-96 two days beforethe team was scheduled to leave. When he returned from thesubsequent World Cup in India and Pakistan, he was censured bythe board for his biting criticism of the team management thatwas picked up by the tape recorder of a snooping reporter and foran open spat with team trainer Dennis Waight. In the Caribbean,he was fined, not for the first time, for turning up a day lateprior to a Test against Sri Lanka.Not only did he seem to be self-destructing. He was also causingchaos within West Indies cricket itself.When the board overruled the selectors’ recommendation that theyreplace Courtney Walsh with him as captain for the 1997 tour ofPakistan, the Trinidad and Tobago Board charged there was ‘acalculated plot’ against ‘its captain, its national hero and itsworld-class performer’ and that it was ‘sowing the seeds ofdestruction’.Jamaicans, on the other hand, accused Lara of deliberatelyundermining Walsh as all three Tests were lost in Pakistan.For all his unpredictability, two things remained constant aboutLara. He was a very special player and he had an understanding ofthe game that made him the obvious, if not only, choice for thecaptaincy, a post for which he had been prepared since he led theWest Indies team to the first Youth World Cup in Australia.Inevitably, if belatedly, Lara was installed in his predetermined role as captain against England in 1998, replacing theadmirable Walsh, and proceeded to lead the West Indies to adouble triumph, 3-1 in the Tests and 4-1 in the One-DayInternationals.His boyhood dream, it appeared, had finally come true.In less than a year, it had again turned sour. On the way to atour of South Africa as eagerly anticipated as much for itssocial and political significance as for its cricket, the playerschose London’s Heathrow Airport as the venue for an unexpectedstrike to air their grievances against the board.Lara, and his vice-captain Carl Hooper, were immediatelydismissed, only to be reinstated after a settlement was reached.What followed was the shame of a 5-0 whitewash in the Tests and a6-1 thrashing in the One-Day Internationals.Lara returned home with his captaincy in jeopardy and his publicstatus as low as it had ever been. Had there been a clearalternative, there is little doubt he would have been sacked.As it was, he was retained, yet castigated, by the board for his’weakness in leadership’, told he had to make ‘significantimprovements in his leadership skills’ and placed on probation ascaptain for two Tests.What happened next beggared belief and revealed a strength ofcharacter in Lara not previously obvious.When the West Indies were bowled out for their all-time low 51 tolose the first Test to the dominant Australians by 314 runs,there was justifiable reason to fear the absolute worse. Instead,the crisis seemed to light a fire in Lara’s belly.He had not scored a hundred for 13 Tests. Now he successivelyreeled off three of his most magnificent. His 213 in Jamaica and153 not out in Barbados inspired remarkable victories.If his even 100 in Antigua could not prevent Australia fromlevelling the series and retaining the Frank Worrell Trophy, atleast he had almost single-handledly restored West Indian prideand self-esteem and his own reputation and credibility asleader.Once more, the euphoria was short-lived. Exit from the firstround of the World Cup followed immediately and a succession oflimp performances in later short-game tournaments in Toronto andSharjah presaged a new crisis in the life of Lara and of WestIndies cricket.It came in December and January on the tour of New Zealand whereboth Tests and all five One-Day Internationals were surrenderedto unified, committed but hardly intimidating opponents.It was the last straw.