Lara in cricket time and social place (30 April 1999)

30 April 1999

Lara in cricket time and social place

The Trinidad Express

When all the commentators were insisting that Brian Lara-and West Indies cricket-were down for the count, one man demurred. Publicly. OUTLET editor Tim Hector wrote in this own paper and in the TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO REVIEW that Lara would "resurrect". It is now a matter of record that against Australia at Sabina Park and then Kensington Oval, the resurrection came. Hector explains the source of his convictions.

Not a few people, here and abroad have congratulated me for believing in what I called the "resurrection of West Indies cricket". I do not have the particular article at hand, and anyway I do not like quoting myself.

But what caused this amazing "resurrection" at Sabina and the ascension at Kensington Oval? How come West Indies have risen from abject defeat in South Africa, and a mauling in the First Test at Queen's Park Oval, to the dizzying heights of two successive Test wins against the acknowledged World Champions of World Cricket? Lara's form. Form, they say is greater than the sum of its individual parts. It is unknowable as definition. But it is as unmistakable as it is unknowable.

Undoubtedly, it is Lara's form which is the difference between debacle in South Africa, calamity in the First Test against Australia, to ascension in the very same series against the world champions of Test cricket.

True, Adams batted well with Lara at Sabina. Sherwin Campbell and Ridley Jacobs both played very well at Bridgetown in the first innings. Walsh bowled splendidly in the crucial Australian second innings taking 5 for 39, and some say, deserved to be Man-of-the-Match. But Lara again was pluperfect.

How come the West Indies played so well, without Hooper and Chanderpaul in their line-up? Did the scientific Ju-Ju man, Dr Rudi Webster, work miracles to turn this rag-tag team into a lean, mean, never-say-die fighting force?

My frank answer to all that and in all humility is I do not know. In fact, let me take cover behind Shakespeare.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, (Tim) Than are dreamt in your philosophy.

And with that I have no argument whatsoever." I do not think that there was any great power of prediction on my part in anticipating a "resurrection". The difference between myself and the other cricket pundits in the region is that they kept looking at the results and I kept looking at the ball. Certainly the 5-0 whitewash drubbing in South Africa, followed by the 6-1 slaughter in the One-day Internationals, and then the dismal collapse for 51 against Australia suggested, on the evidence of things seen, that there could be no substance of things hoped for after that succession of calamities. Therefore, blame the Board, blame the manager and coach, above all, since he was not performing with the bat, blame the captain, Brian Charles Lara.

After South Africa, and the rout there, and then the First Test against Australia, West Indies cricket had hit rock bottom. Or below. But I observed no one, even in this debacle in South Africa, was collaring the West Indian bowling. Not Cullinan, not Cronje, not even Kallis, and not for that matter Steve Waugh, arguably the batsman in the world today most likely to make a big score routinely. I noted too that while the West Indies had problems with openers, there were no great opening partners in the world. If Mark Taylor was a constant, it was more because he was then captain. He had a long, long, losing drought in terms of runs. No team anywhere in the world had a settled pair of openers. Aamir Sohail and Saeed Anwar of Pakistan came closest. But Pakistan was often breaking up the partnership. Slater was in and out of Australia's side, as was Matthew Eliott. India was now using Ramesh and VVSLaxman as openers.

Therefore I remained convinced that Lara, Hooper, Chanderpaul, with a good player at no. 6 constituted as good a batting side as any in the world. Or, at any rate, not all that inferior to Langer, Waugh squared and Blewett.

Lara though was not producing. Hooper was a homeless mind. Guyana was not his home. The relationship between player and territory had been fractured since his youth, when Hooper moved to Canada. Guyana, in truth and in fact, had fallen apart. The centre could not hold. The races are at a stand-off, the next thing to outright civil strife. Hooper did not claim Guyana, nor did Guyana particularly claim him. Yet Hooper was the best cricketer, as batsman, fielder and bowler on the West Indies team. Still as batsman and bowler, he delivered so infrequently that he seemed more liability than asset. He felt more at home at Kent than in Guyana or, for that matter, the West Indies. In my book, Hooper should bat at three, with Lara four, Chanderpaul five and Dave Joseph six.

Chanderpaul, more settled in his Indian village, showed consistency. But batting him out of place in Test matches undid his consistency. Chanderpaul is not a No. three. Against good pace bowling, he is a sucker for the ball going across him with his exaggerated crouch. At five or six, Chanderpaul is a fine batsman.

And now Lara. Those who say there has been no development programme in the West Indies fly in the face of facts and of Lara. Let bare facts suffice. Lara was chosen as captain to lead the West Indies team to the Youth World Cup in Australia as far back as 1988. The same Brian Lara led the West Indies "A" Team to Zimbabwe a decade ago in 1989. The following year, 1990, he was captain of Trinidad and Tobago before his 21st birthday. Lara was groomed for the captaincy in his teens. He is not the child of privilege. He was a child prodigy, if anything. He earned his place at the top and served his apprenticeship.

Even now as I write, he carries into his mature captaincy, a weakness of his adolescence. He tinkers, fiddles, even hip-hops, whenever his bowlers have taken the top six or seven or eight, and rarely finishes off the tail-end with despatch.

Especially so, when a top-order batsman is batting with the tail. Always Lara, as captain, releases the tension by giving the top-order batsman the single, opening the field, to get at the tail-ender. Nearly always the fast bowlers change style and gear, and go into short-pitched bowling, which the tail-ender clobbers, as Miller did just now. Miller took 22 off an Ambrose over, more than half his score. Ambrose was tired, after 8 overs on the trot. Lara persisted, with good motive, mark you, namely, to allow Ambrose his first five-wicket haul of this series. From four for 60, Ambrose moved in two overs to four for 93. Lara got the message far too late, and removed Ambrose from the attack. Lara was trapped in Hamletian indecision, to bowl Ambrose or not to bowl, and whether it was nobler in the mind to take arms against the sea of troubles Miller was causing and so end them. Lara preferred the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Otherwise he is a good captain, with a keen eye and feel for the nuances of the game. He is, though, given to the unorthodox, which makes the purists' head shake, even spin. Incidentally, and strangely, Lara often errs on the side of the conservative. He often eschews attack, and opts for containment. The aggression of his batting is not in his captaincy. Such contradictions in a single person are not uncommon.

Like most moderns, Lara dislikes a leg-slip, though the nudge to long-leg had become a staple of modern batting. I say nudge, because the leg-glance is never really, or rarely, played by batsmen today. The air-borne nudge wide of the keeper but down leg-slip's throat is the common currency. Steve Waugh is a prime culprit early in his innings. Lara is yet to do something about it. The fixed-category of his time disregards a leg-slip. But every age has its fixed categories of thought and approach.

I come now to the critical problem-Lara's batting. After the heroics of 277 and 375 and 501 there came the slump. Two years without a century. The easy, natural footwork went. He was still quick with the bat, and had it seems aeons of time to play his wide repertoire of sumptuous shots, the regular as well as the improvised. In many respects his improvisations were better than the great jazz musicians, including Duke Ellington, Charlie Mingus or the more contemporary Joshua Ridman. Lara's late-cutting, in my view, is better even than Frank Worrell's, who had put his imprimatur on the shot. Lara displays that certainty of eye, that deftness of touch, the suppleness of wrist and the exquisite sense of placement on the late-cut in particular that makes him an exceptional batsman of his time. So too, is his slash-drive, a masterpiece of improvisation. If wide, he allows the ball to reach a spot parallel to the front foot end then unleashes that superb stroke, the slow drive I call it, for want of a more immortal term. Anyone who doubted his prodigious abilities did not have eyes to see.

It is not a question as to whether Lara is better than Richards. That is not at issue. Each in his own time. Each masters the problems of his time. In Richards's time, it was Lillee. Thompson and Pascoe, or Willis or Old, or Bedi, Chandrashekar and Prasanna.

In Lara's time, it is McGrath and Gillespie. Donald and Pollock, Warne and McGill. Each in his own time, I repeat. And comparisons, however exacting and exact, ignore the necessities of each time. So much for that. Richards was the premier batsman of his time. Lara is the premier batsman of his time.

And now I come to the gravamen of the issue of Lara's batting. Why is he a superb driver, a master puller, an excellent sweeper, a fine cutter, though primarily a frontfoot player, like the greats he plays well off the backfoot? But he is definitely weak to the lifting ball on the body. So elementary a weakness in so great a batsman befuddles.

Now that Lara has found his footwork again, though not as silky smooth as it was, the West Indies have begun to win again. But we are still far too dependent on Lara. We are as dependent on Lara in the 90s as we were on Headley, as Atlas, in the 30s. History repeats itself.

Note this well, I listen to everyone of Lara's unrehearsed words with rapt attention. Listen to Lara in 1997 speaking of the current 1999 tour. Said Lara: "We've got them (Australia) in the Caribbean in two years' time, and I promise, you we will NOT be losing that series." He was as good as his word. It is better than prophesy. At any rate, he matched prophesy with corresponding great innings. This, for sure, in my book makes him exceptional, even extraordinarily exceptional.

Believe me I know those words by heart. They startled me when he said them. I am not so startled now. Lara has been as good as his word. We cannot now lose the series against Australia. Lara, beset with problems outside the off-stump, to both late away-swinger and late in-swinger which McGrath mastered, applied himself in the interim, and McGrath had to resort to the short ball on the body. Still, Lara produced-phenomenally. Not even Headley in 1931-32, with scores of 0 and 11 in the First Test, 19 and 2 in the Second Test, concluding nine successive failures responded as well as Lara. Headley in 1931-32 responded with 102 out of 193, 28 and 148 and 105 and 30 in the Fifth Test.

Bradman having lost his first two Tests as captain in 1936-37 responded with scores of 13, 270, 212 and 169 to lay the foundation to win the next three Tests. Lara's response of 213, 8 and 153 and now 100 and 7 in the fourth and final Test is certainly in that very rare class.

On the basis of that evidence I will bet, though not a betting man, that Lara will have a boundary-studded remedy for Pollock and Donald, when they come hither, and which will hasten their going hence. A great poet and dramatist once said "Men must endure their coming hither/As much as their going hence/Ripeness is all." Lara is ripe now. At the very acme of his supreme powers. His 153 in Barbados was a masterpiece of an innings. Few innings could be better composed with point and counter-point so that even Johann Sebastian Bach would have been most proud.

With two other batsmen contributing modestly the West Indies could be back on course. But, with the structured adjustment of our societies, and the Banana Adjustment to come, cricket will either lead a resurgence or flounder. After all, Lara's magnificent hundred here produced a mouse-222 all out. It reflected the one-manism and planlessness of current West Indian society.

But I want to end on a different note altogether. Everybody took pot-shots at Lara, I refused to join that bandwagon. And so a trenchant English critic had this to say: "There is more to Lara's downfall, however, than his failure as captain. The sad truth is that since his two world records in 1994-375 against England and 501 for Warwickshire-his batting has become known for its ordinariness. I am convinced the fault is not his but ours. And by ours, I mean those of us who populate the wide world of cricket. We have encouraged him to believe he is god-like; that there is no future in being an ordinary person."

I pause here. I never saw ordinariness in Lara's batting, not even in the cameos. Nearly always there was the extraordinary shot, which reminded that even when low-scoring extraordinary is the extraordinary, and cannot be ordinary. Lara is, for sure, one thing: extraordinary. He did not have it thrust upon him. He was not born to it. He achieved it. He belongs in that rare category, Weekes, Sobers, Richards. And the critics who attempt to undo the latchet of his genius might well be writing out of prejudice unlimited despite their show of liberalism.

But our critic quoted above, who shall remain nameless since he now has to eat his own words, written as late as Thursday March 11, 1999 in the English press, continued this way: "In other words," wrote the English critic, "we have done everything to make Brian Lara believe he is a law unto himself. On the way, his name, sadly, has become worth more than his services. Like other sportsmen we know-Mike Tyson and Gazza come to mind-everything suggests that Lara is not able to handle celebrity. We have made him into a pop-star pin-up with an image of a self-regarding, arrogant, young man."

Beauty, I am told but do not believe, is in the eye of the beholder. I follow Kats, "Beauty is truth, and truth beauty, and that is all we need to know."

The truth is Lara is his batting. It is his mode of expression. The placement, the timing, the high backlift, the sharpness of eye, the eye-hand-and-foot co-ordination are all things of beauty, and therefore, artistic truth. Lara is not Mike Tyson or Gazza. These two exhibit the pathologies of a complex industrial society in the throes of near insoluble contradictions and assaults on the human personality. Not so Lara.

Those who see arrogance are not discerning enough to distinguish certitude from arrogance. Bradman, phenomenal as he was, failed on the damp wickets of his time. Not so Headley. Lara, like Headley, failed for a time, though Lara's failures lasted longer. Lara, like Headley, like Bradman, like Jobbs had to reorganise his batting to cope with new and unexpected problems. He rose to the challenge. Therein lies his unquestionable greatness if not his immortality. So far, he has written some imperishable innings in the annals of cricket, not least his 213, 153 and his 100 in successive Test matches.

Not even Bradman did that under the immense pressures and after the horrendous horrors through which Lara has just passed. It is, therefore, all the more astounding in its magnificent ascension. He deserves to be more than a pop-star pin-up. Such do much less than Lara has already done and will do.

Such as Lara, the extraordinary, we ordinary mortals do not easily or readily understand. What we do not understand, but can understand, we often miss by our resort to subjectivity. I will not rely on my own estimate of objective conditions in the Caribbean. I will rely instead, on Peter Roebuck, who is one of the best writers and stylists on cricket today. But, unlike me, he is a rank conservative in politics.

Peter Roebuck had this to say: "Cricket in the West Indies faces a challenge that goes far beyond its immediate task of trouncing all-comers in an entertaining way whilst uniting a group of nations inclined to sniff each other with the suspicion a crafty cat shows when it spots a lump of cheese." Few that I know have been more apt and more succinct in stating the interests, contents and purposes of West Indies cricket: Trouncing all-comers, in an entertaining way while uniting islands deranged by foaming channels and the vast expanse of bitter faction and fricton.

But even more cogently, Roebuck continued: "Cricket and the way of life that surrounds it, in the West Indies, is under threat ... But the threat goes far beyond, mere hospitality, reaching into the tradition of calypso and courtesy, of friendship and faith which have, apparently been part of West Indian life for 100 years. It can be heard for instance in the stinging, the bitter lyrics of rap music (or Dance-hall) now everywhere to be heard ... Calypso and reggae are West Indian, rap is an import from the back streets of America, streets full of crime and cocaine. It is part of an invasion. So too is Cable Television. Grenada already has 2,000 television subscribers (Antigua has 10,000) and it is growing apace and so it will be in sport, as basketball, whose dreadful tentacles already hold so much of the world in its grip, spreads its empire ever wider. Can West Indian culture survive the current onslaught? ... Today West Indian cricketers live in more confusing times, torn between the ways of their raising and the influence of music, cable TV and the abject politics of vengeance. If care is not taken, cricket will be part of a dying culture and faith, calypso and courtesy will die with it. All those who have travelled will confirm that the replacement is definitely inferior."

I hasten to disagree that basketball, in and of itself, has any dreadful tentacles, not even the greed that surrounds basketball is native and inherent in the game. It is a wonderful game. But otherwise, Roebuck is on the ball. West Indian society, long in one-crop or one-industry stalemate, is decaying, and that decay, that fragmentation, that degeneration into the politics of vengeance" of bribes, of inducement with money and not with policies, must have a telling effect on us all, Lara inclusive. We consume the products and ways of others, and so cannot become. Lara, like our society in general, is trapped between the ways of his raising and the value-less globalising invasion which assails us all.

But let the last word go to Lara. "We are" he said "going through a period where a lot of questions are flying around about the future of West Indies cricket and I see my issue as a very small issue in the entire scenario ... The main issue is West Indies cricket does not belong to the Board. It doesn't belong to the players. It belongs to the West Indian people and they are now coming forward, maybe because of my issue and that's very good for West Indies cricket."

I agree entirely. But it will take a West Indian nation to make West Indies cricket belong to the West Indian people, in our long delayed Becoming.

Source :: The Trinidad Express (https://www.trinidad.net/express/)