Brian Charles Lara
- `The end brings new beginnings’
By Colin E. Croft, former West Indies fast bowler
Guyana Chronicle
April 23, 2007
LET us get one thing clear. Despite what was thought by many that would apparently occur, nothing disastrous happened when Brian Charles Lara announced his retirement from, and then played his last games in international cricket.
I could even prolong the thought to report that no temples were rent in twain, and there were no earthquakes, thunderstorms, tidal waves, hurricanes etc., etc., etc. Simply, a great cricketer has retired.
I also remembered hearing, as I was then still playing for the West Indies cricket team, when it had been announced that the late great Dr Eric Williams had died, in 1981/1982, that the country of Trinidad & Tobago “would be no more”.
The radio and television stations carried on, relentlessly, that “since the Father of the Nation had died, the country would suffer greatly, and would die too.” I do not know what you think, but, Trinidad & Tobago is also still here with us in the Caribbean, with its oil and gas, among other things, providing much life-blood for the very Caribbean, and many other places too!
Suffice it to say that a great, maybe the best batsman ever, perhaps even a genius batsman, certainly one of the best ever, has called it a day, but, life goes on. That is the way of cricket, and professional sport.
Time and tide wait for no-one. For those who thought that West Indies cricket, world cricket, and maybe the entire world, would evaporate, or some such, if Brian Lara stopped playing cricket; well, we are all still here!
Brian Lara has left a wonderful legacy of batsmanship. He has had runs like the proverbial sands on the Caribbean beaches, with 131 Test matches providing 11 953 runs, at the brilliant average of 52.88, while his one-dayers are similarly productive; 299 games, and 10 405 runs, at an excellent average of 40.48. Very few current or future players would ever get close, if any at all, to those stats.
Who does will have transcended the bounds of greatness, as ‘BL’ has, and ascended into great cricketing uniqueness!
Whenever batsmanship in the world is mentioned, his name would be called, as it has been since his Test debut in 1990, as he has broken the world record, twice, for the most runs in a Test innings; 375 and 400 not out; and in First Class cricket; 501.
As for me, Lara’s best innings, his champion innings of all-time, was his 153 not out, against the rampaging Australians in Barbados in 1999, to help keep the West Indies in that series. You had to see it to believe it and anyone who did would never forget it in a lifetime.
Yet, I am very sure that Brian Lara, as great a batsman as he has been, would have traded half of those runs simply to have been known as the successful leader that he has not been; the successful leader that he so craved, the one to put West Indies cricket back on the map of winners, that aspect of our tenure that has died for the West Indies since 1995.
The ICC CWC 2007 was supposed to have been his crowning victory, his greatest legacy. As Lara must have realised since he had been given the captaincy back in 1998, being the best batsman in the world does not necessarily translate into being even a good captain, much less a great one. There are few limitations to great ambition, except, maybe, reality!
In Lara’s case, he was not even a good one. Captains must do one thing and one thing only, even if they bat or bowl well, what they would have been originally selected for. Despite the usual drivel of Lara not having a good team, as had been so often suggested, captains must, above all, inspire their team, every single one of the players, to be better than the player himself would ever realise that he really is.
That is why, as captain, Clive Lloyd was so good, even as he batted well too. That is why, unfortunately, Lara has been so poor a captain, despite his several records and massive cricketing landmarks. Whatever he did individually never managed to inspire the collective, not even the 400!
I strongly believe that, even now, if Brian Lara wanted to make a century in any game, he would. He is that good as a batsman. That, though, is exactly the problem here.
A sportsman that plays in a team must always want to do well for his team, along with doing well for himself. The two scenarios are irreversible and feed from each other. Such examples as Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls are all there for history to judge.
Lara’s legacy, if there is another one from his cricket career, would be that he has been perceived as being very selfish, some even say vindictive, especially in the latter stages of his career, and only batted well when he wanted to, not when the team really needed him to.
Only a real batting genius, as Lara has always been, at the very least, can do such.
I am quite disappointed that Lara has elected not to tour the United Kingdom with the West Indies; that tour starting in May. Does that too smell of selfishness? Had Lara gone on that tour, his still very good middle-order batting would have come in handy, since the new West Indies captain, whosoever he is, would have his hands full with trying to get his feet wet, running a team for the first time on such an important tour.
Also, Lara has played, in the past, under new captains, after he had been similarly deposed. He made 688 glorious runs, perhaps his real batting summit, against Muttiah Muralitheran, Chaminda Vaas and co., in a losing cause, in three Test matches, against Sri Lanka, in Sri Lanka, in 2001.
The captain then was his then friend, Carl Hooper.
It has been suggested that Lara was pushed into the action of retirement, from the West Indies Cricket Board, more than the player himself just jumping off on his own terms. Perhaps the WICB, and especially the three selectors; Clyde Butts, Andy Roberts and Gordon Greenidge, have, like most of us had already long done, come around to realising that West Indies cricket and the international team need a new direction, a new impetus, a new leader on the field, and new energies; in other words, starting from ground zero.
If the new captain, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Daren Ganga or whosoever is given the job, can do exactly these things, is still left to great conjecture and the immediate future. None of this will be very easy, so please understand that it will also take some time too!
“I have always been a team player,” suggested Brian Lara in his last public interview as West Indies captain, at the end of the West Indies v England CWC Super 8 game, at the emotionally entangled New Kensington Oval.
I would almost agree with him there. Unfortunately, he has never been a great team leader, despite the massive hypocritical talk that would now continue to emanate from the dishonest ones.
I would allow that Brian Lara has probably been the best politician that the Caribbean has ever produced. After all, it is not a normal being who could manage such leadership failures; three times; managing to convince some supposed very learned and experienced people that his leadership was so good that it was what everyone needed; thrice!
Great leadership evolves from respect, given in both directions; from the top, downwards; and from the bottom, upwards. Since none of us is equal to the other, one cannot simply demand respect, one must surely earn it.
It had even been suggested, by many West Indies cricketers, present and past, that they might have operated, when it came to Brian Lara, somewhat exactly as was suggested in one of the ‘Godfather’ trilogy films: ‘I might fear you, because I know that you can hurt me, but I will never respect you!’
The obvious question, now that Lara has decided to retire from all international cricket – does that mean that he might still play for Trinidad & Tobago – is ‘What happens next?’
You may have already noticed too that everyone is already running for cover after the Lara retirement announcement.
The man who, it is reputed, almost unilaterally, elected Brian Lara to his third West Indies captaincy, Ken Gordon, the president of the West Indies Cricket Board, has now started talking of “new and improved things happening in West Indies cricket.” He too should commit hara-kiri, riding off into the sunset. His supposed protégé, the present team’s manager, Clive Lloyd, must also ride out with him!
Bennett King, the present team coach, along with his entire pricy entourage; worth no less that US$1 million; should simply be paid off, for doing very little; “we are a better unit that we were five years ago’ – yeah, right; and sent packing; contract closed.
They cannot be any more useful after being so utterly useless over the last four years. It has been an unprecedented failure. Why prolong the expensive and mind-blowing agony?
Finally the entire West Indies Cricket Board should be revamped, and some of the dinosaurs Jackie Hendriks of Jamaica and his like who had been on the WICB even before I first played cricket for the West Indies, way back in 1977, thusly eliminated. Younger energies are needed, modern minds, must be encouraged and used!
A full, independent, professional house-cleaning, painful as it would be, must be done ASAP.
If West Indies cricket is to have any future impact in world cricket, then a clean slate of learning, fertile ground for progress, opportunities and technologies to evolve again, like the proverbial phoenix, must be provided. Keeping the old status quo, as has happened over the last decade, at least, would do nothing but patch the cracks, provide no continued impetus, certainly prolong the long-tooted but ill-defined and ill-executed ideas, and provide no immediate or even future planned hope of becoming much better.
As for the West Indies cricket team on the field of play, I would say this.
If all that I advocate above is done, then I expect that we will see unbelievable enterprise, regardless of the player that is appointed as captain for the upcoming tour of the United Kingdom.
If all suggested is done, then two years from now, please mark my words here, many of us will not even recognise the West Indies cricket team, if these changes are made now.
Many of us will probably go back to becoming the great supporters, winning ones that we had been in the 1970s, 1980s and even early 1990s. Great cricket is contained in some of our present and future cricketers. All they need is a portal, opportunities to do their best without being cowed by better players who made them seem inadequate.
Finally, for what it is worth, the immediate future captaincy stakes would again provide another opportunity of a Caribbean lifetime.
I would be tempted to give the captaincy to Ramnaresh Sarwan, since his team-mates seem to react to him much more positively than to his immediate predecessor.
Daren Ganga should also get some consideration, though.
However, the vice-captain should be wicketkeeper Denesh Ramdin, who, with progress, and time, will become a very good leader.
Many might disagree, but this has been done before, in a sense, in South Africa, Graeme Smith – international cricket captain at age 22; and New Zealand Steven Fleming – international cricket captain at age 24. They are now the best international cricket captains, period. We in the Caribbean can do that too.