Lara innings reaches beyond cricket (21 March 1999)
CERTAIN innings in Test cricket deserve to be recognised as great because of their nearness to perfection
21-Mar-1999
21 March 1999
Lara innings reaches beyond cricket
By Scyld Berry
CERTAIN innings in Test cricket deserve to be recognised as great
because of their nearness to perfection. A few others, like Brian
Lara's double-century against Australia in Jamaica last week,
have to be accorded the same rank because, in addition to being
fine examples of batting, they have had an impact far beyond the
boundary.
Among innings of such wider significance there has not been one
like Lara's since 1992-93, when Mohammad Azharuddin made a
match-winning 182 against England in Calcutta. India had just
endured one of its fits of communal blood-letting, with hundreds
of Muslims massacred. The healing done by Azharuddin, as the
Muslim captain of the national team in a mainly Hindu country,
cannot be quantified; but such communal violence has not happened
since.
Defeating England also had a beneficial effect on West Indian
cricket last winter, arresting the decline in the sport's quality
and popularity there, but subsequently in South Africa their team
went into free-fall. After the numerous humilations since Viv
Richards retired unvanquished in 1991, the younger generation of
West Indians could not have maintained their elders' interest in
the game if their team had now capitulated to Australia.
Lara's innings therefore had this rare social and political
dimension. Governments of the Anglophone Caribbean are trying to
pull together to preserve some distance from the United States as
it threatens their culture and banana industry; and cricket binds
the West Indies more than anything else. Without cricket -
victorious, flamboyant, sensual cricket, played at best in the
heat of inspiration - the islands could soon become poor Puerto
Ricos.
Lara knows this all right: it was evident in his public
pronouncements when he was made captain a year ago for the series
against England. It is just that he hasn't been able to do much
about it, as his batting has gone steadily backwards for almost
five years, losing its discipline and patience since his two
world records - the highest Test and first-class innings - in the
first half of 1994.
Playing two seasons in England was the worst thing he could have
done, the surfeit lulling him into sloppy habits, but Lara wanted
his material rewards - rewards the West Indies are too poor to
offer. He is a normal person blessed with an extraordinary talent
and placed in the most demanding position in the region: similar
to Gary Sobers, weaker than Frank Worrell, who embraced his
destiny rather than toying with it as Lara had done until last
week.
Courtney Walsh began the revival by bowling out Australia at a
Sabina Park that is fair again (since the abandoned Test against
England the pitch at least has been rolled, even if local heads
have not). Walsh did not let his captain or the West Indian
people down, as Lara had done when Walsh was captain. Then the
West Indian top-order batting failed once more, and this time it
was now or never: Lara was on his last chance from the West
Indian selectors.
And - we can only conjecture - perhaps it was the very extremity
of these circumstances which forced Lara to concentrate as he has
not done for five often frivolous years. With total discipline,
and the modesty which comes in maturity, Lara went back to the
beginning and built brick by brick, every ball on its merit. His
immediate reward is the captaincy for the remaining two Tests of
the series.
The worst of many poor moves by the West Indian Board was to ban
Desmond Haynes, in effect for the rest of his career, for turning
up late for the domestic season. Had he stayed on, he would have
taught the present openers not how to hit the new ball but how to
leave it alone and how to use their feet, and he would have held
one end while the cameo kids in the middle order came and went.
In Haynes's absence Lara had to set a new example himself.
From this distance, on television, the Australians seemed less of
a force than they were when Mark Taylor's gum-chewing jaw was the
epicentre of their effort in the field. Captaincy has not
affected Steve Waugh's batting, but the ball went through him in
the field. He put on two change-bowlers together, conceding easy
runs; his field-settings were conventional and he let things
happen. On the basis of this Test at least, Ian Chappell was
right again in advocating Shane Warne.
Even so, Lara's innings fell below perfection only when he did
not re-adjust to the second new ball, by when West Indies were
ahead though not out of sight, but for once he had earned the
right to survive a reckless phase. For the strokeplay which
preceded and followed was glorious in its command.
Off his own bat Lara, for the moment, arrested the decline in the
quality and popularity of West Indian cricket. But he is nearer
to recovering his former glory than the West Indian team are, as
their top-order batsmen remain so poor, flourishing wrist-watches
at the crease but little else. For the forseeable future, though,
it will surely prove beyond one man, however heroic, to make West
Indies supreme again.
Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)