Lara's Saturday of brilliant sunshine

On this Saturday of brilliant sunshine, a fire raged through the downtown shopping centre of Port of Spain. From dawn to dusk its flames licked their way through a mall, crossed the street to restaurants and stores and even singed the steeple of the cathedral more than a block away. Two hundred businesses lost - a sad and sober warning of the danger of being unprepared for the unexpected.

Just outside the burning city, half an Oval sat watching the seemingly inexorable approach of another double by Brian Lara. But unlike the flames, whose smoke was visible from the Queen's Park Oval, Lara was not to reach two hundred.

A boundary already tensely lined by the dark-clad figures of the police anticipating a pitch invasion, went suddenly limp as Andre Nel's slower ball tipped a momentarily unnoticed bail and the exultant cry of the keeper stunned the Oval. The ovation as Lara left, his 196 bringing down the curtain on the West Indies innings at 347 was tribute to the majesty of his performance over the first two days of this second Test.

But despite the dazzling artistry and flair of an innings already being described (again) as one of his best, as he walked away he must have known that he and the team had fallen short of their targets, and experienced player that he is, he would have known that falling short can have as disastrous as effect as being unprepared for the unexpected.

Not that Lara had not prepared. He was visibly trimmer and speedier between the wickets, training himself through the cricket-less months by running up and down the Lady Chancellor Hill where he lives. He'd publicly accepted his place under new captain Shivnarine Chanderpaul with good grace, announcing that he felt it was the best move for West Indies cricket.

After the protracted disputes over sponsorship contracts, and his decision not to play in the first Test if other players would not be considered for selection, many had feared he would walk away from the game. Others had wished he would.

Such has been Lara's destiny: damned if he does, damned if he doesn't.

Pressure beating down on him from day one, as he quipped at the end of the first day with his score on 159, making him all the more resolute in his career. Those who understood, had fully anticipated a big century at the Oval, knowing that it has been his traditional response. So the tension had arrived in Trinidad, following the climax and descent of the first Test at Bourda where Chanderpaul's double century had similarly declared that he was ready to carry the captaincy.

It seemed right that Chanderpaul should have a moment to savour the glory of being the first debutant captain to score a double. At least a few days to bask. But it was not to be.

He was entering Lara country, and although he was warmly received, there was no doubting who held court here. Streets leading to the Oval were festooned with gigantic banners billowing the message: "All the Best, Brian Lara," from the local telecommunications provider, TSTT (a Cable & Wireless majority owned company). Walking under one with an enormous Lara smiling down in an other-worldly sort of way was spooky. Such glorious adulation, such single-minded devotion to his cause! It was as if there was no world but Lara's, as if the battle ahead was aimed directly at his chest.

Chanderpaul would walk in his shadow, captaincy or not, and as if to remind that he was in a class by himself, Lara delivered a performance that may not have matched Chanderpaul's in figures, but surpassed it in delivery, allowing his captain only a glimmer of the limelight in that he shared the crease as he reached his 27th Test century - and broke yet another West Indian record.

But fate always has the last word, and just as Chanderpaul could not rally his young team to a victory in Guyana, just as he invoked shades of Carl Hooper in his outwardly bemused stance as the second innings drifted further away; so too Lara did not carry his lance any further in the second innings.

The challenge for this captain, still so draped in the shadows, would have been to rise and assert ownership of the helm, but alas, he too fell. And once again, the sun set on a West Indies team averting their eyes from the familiar face of defeat. And another captain-in-waiting, Ramnaresh Sarwan, bravely carrying his flag into battle.