'Lara's The Victim, Not The Villian'

Brian Lara, currently the most controversial personality in West Indies cricket, may not be the villain he is often made out to be, but instead the misunderstood victim of an age and community not yet equipped to deal with the divergent philosophies of such an enigmatic cricketing genius.

Such was the picture painted by Professor Hilary Beckles as he delivered the seventh Barclays/UWI Sir Frank Worrell Memorial Lecture at the Teaching Complex, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, on Monday night.

He was speaking on the topic, Lara And The Caribbean Imagination.

The professor is the director of the Centre for Cricket Research and the pioneer of cricket studies at the university. He is also the pro vice-chancellor for Undergraduate studies and professor of economic and social history.

'Lara is a powerful global force that resides in a weak nation. He is a globalised commodity, but he is fettered by the smallness and inwardness of his nation and his nation's imagination,' Beckles told the capacity crowd.

There was standing room only as Beckles kept the lively audience amused and captivated throughout his almost hour-long presentation.

The thought-provoking and invigorating speech, which was eloquently delivered by the charismatic Beckles, was punctuated with loud applause as he excited the audience with his theories relating primarily to Lara's relationship with the West Indies Cricket Board and how it was perceived by the public.

'He (Lara) is tugged, torn, pulled and divided as all of us are by these contradictory forces of the present time that continue to bring division of Carib-bean people,' he said.

'No West Indian superstar has ever had such a deeply divisive impact on the public imagination as Brian Charles Lara.

'It is now global open season on Lara, this genius of our post-independence civilisation.'

Acknowledging Lara's status as a genius, Beckles wittily described his record-breaking feats as evidence of his 'madness'.

'With these extraordinary feats, these feats of madness, Lara became the largest political icon in the region and was celebrated in '94 with the award of the highest national honour of his native Trinidad and Tobago The Trinity Cross,' Beckles said.

Applause

There was an eruption of laughter and thunderous applause from the audience when Beckles said that if Lara was correctly criticised for placing century before country, contract before commitment and his own mind before those of his men, then the question would have to be asked whether president Rousseau and Lara did not share common values.

'My own view,' said Beckles, 'is that we have to distance ourselves at this time from all such surface issues that relate to personality and focus on the underlying issues here, which is primarily the remaking of Caribbean identity under radically changing global circumstances.'

Beckles said that Lara was the first major transitional figure that typified the Caribbean sports person in the new global circumstance.

'He represents perfectly the clear contradictory character of globalisation as a new order of economic power and cultural relations.'

The professor identified West Indies captain Jimmy Adams as the type of leader who might more readily be accepted because of his affinity to the Worrell model.

'It is also possible that in the Jimmy who we love we see the global benefits of a materially secured and culturally nourished upbringing, as well as the deeper access to quality education.'

He said the genius of Lara made it difficult for him to fit into the framework of any traditional model. According to the university professor, society was unsure of how to deal with people like Lara whose behaviour was different from the norm.

One approach being advanced was to banish him, the professor said, but this came mainly from the same type of person who saw hanging as the solution to problems related to crime.

Beckles said that it was only recently that we were learning how to deal with what people called slow learners and under-achievers but we had not learnt how to deal with very fast learners and over-achievers and how to care for them in special ways.

Unlike Clive Lloyd, whose leadership role in the Kerry Packer affair was a way of representing the professional cricketer, and Viv Richards, who was an integral symbol and icon of the black power movement, he stated that Lara had no real cricket movement to which he could affiliate himself. His battles with the board had therefore been personalised, Beckles said.

'He is the only cricketer of the current generation, or even the previous generation, who had the power to stand up to the board and not be crushed.'

This was met with cheers of approval from the audience.

He said people preferred to scrutinise Lara and judge him harshly rather than address the process of Caribbean change and transformation. And he expressed concern that Lara was considered by some to be lacking in discipline and commitment.

He queried how a person could excel to the level Lara had reached without discipline and commitment.