'New' Lara eager to learn from past mistakes (25 Jan 1998)

25 January 1998

'New' Lara eager to learn from past mistakes

By Brough Scott

IT WAS exactly what he did not want. The four-day Trinidad v Leewards Islands game was over in less than two, with Trinidad skittled out for just 87 in their second innings (B C Lara 1), and there was the West Indies' new captain trying to control the defensive interview with phrases like "I am not going to discuss how I feel about my batting at the moment". It's going to be a tough week for Brian Lara.

The interviews are likely to get rather tougher. The assembled inquisitors at 10 to five at Port of Spain's still sun-baked Queen's Park Oval consisted of a microphone each from local television and radio, two tape recorders and a tired and emotional fan who had just shaken hands with a baffled line of victors.

Five yards away, 50 local 10-year-olds chanted "Lah-rah, Lah-rah, Lah-rah" as if to emphasise the need for deference to Trinidad's most famous citizen. The rat pack will not be so accommodating in Jamaica.

All this might be accentuating the negative in a match which saw others in the West Indies Test squad showing ominous signs of form. Opener Stuart Williams hit the winning runs for the Leewards, the diminutive David Williams was an acrobatic presence behind the Trinidad stumps, fast bowlers Ian Bishop, Mervyn Dillon and the resurgent Curtly Ambrose were among the wickets. What was more, Kenny Benjamin and Keith Arthurton, who had both failed to make the cut, fought out the man-of-the-match award. But Lara? "I am not going to discuss my batting."

The trouble is that history wants to. Four years ago this week the same Queen's Park, with those forested hills to the north and the dockside oil silos to the south, was home to a brilliant 180 by Lara as a prelude to his dazzling England series, climaxed by the Test record 375 in Antigua in March and followed in June by his 501 for Warwickshire, the highest first-class score. Ten years ago it was here that a then 18-year-old Lara, in only his second first-class game, gave notice of greatness by defying Malcolm Marshall and Joel Garner of Barbados for a match-saving 92.

In 1988, the teenage prodigy batted for 5hr 49min and came off in tears. On Friday, the much-famed prodigal lasted a mere 12 minutes and then sat scowling in the players' box. True, his first game back after a break following the unhappy and unsuccessful tour of Pakistan was a magnificent, carefully crafted 216 in a local Trinidad competition. But he then scored just four and 52 against the Windwards (Dominica, Grenada etc) and a mere 20 in the first innings against the Leewards (Antigua, St Kitts and the Virgin Isles). By most standards, that is hardly "in perfect nick".

Yet to even hint at such a thing in your questioning is to invite a truculent, dark-eyed stare all so different from the easy elegance on the pitch. Out there, even in defence, there is a smiling mastery of his mÚtier and his solitary single on Friday was still a gem of a late cut off Benjamin with the promise of so many more to come.

Short, powerful 5.5-footers are usually forceful, bustling little Napoleons in their movements. Earlier, while captaining in the field with his long white sleeves buttoned at the cuff, Lara had looked a suave conductor semaphoring at first slip. And when he prompted his Trinidad orchestra into getting a wicket with the second ball of the first over, another with the first ball of the second on the way to wrapping up the Leewards innings with six wickets for 28 before lunch, you had to think he knows a score as well as he makes one.

What is needed now is a crash course, albeit belatedly, in the Gary Lineker school of how to handle fame. Since he first started hitting marbles back home in the Santa Cruz valley with that wooden bat his brother Rudolph had made, Lara had dreamt and visualised virtually every conceivable drama on a cricket pitch with not a thought of how to handle the hidden snares of everyone apparently wanting to be your friend and paying for it.

Locally, it has not been a problem and his fans' devotion is reciprocated with his sponsorship of the National Schools cricket tournament. But amid inter-island jealousies and the greater distractions overseas, he has not been so lucky and as international captain he must quickly come to terms with all the hassle. Failure here will not just imperil his own game but his country's too.

At the moment his career is in every sense at the crossroads. Four years ago he captivated us all with his sunshine modesty as well as his sublime talent. We smothered him with attention and so much largesse that he hardly had time to deal with the chores of county cricket and would take calls on his mobile phone while fielding in the Warwickshire slips. Accustomed to dominating things at school (he captained everything from 16 years and up) and island, he did not take easily to the understudy role, latterly under Richie Richardson and Courtney Walsh. This week he is in charge in Walsh's home island of Jamaica. Many locals expect him to be booed to start with and he certainly will be if he and the team do not deliver.

At a press conference on Tuesday he was repentant. "Being captain of the West Indies is going to give me an interesting life," he had said, "and I promise the people of the Caribbean that, although I have had my indiscretions, I have thought long and hard about what I intend to do in the future and that those days are behind me."

This homily spurred Trinidad's former West Indies fast bowler Colin Croft to say: "He hasn't just turned a new leaf, it's whole new bookcase." And when an audience was finally granted in the raucous Queen's Park dressing room on Friday, "New" Lara was still doing his best.

"I am a more seasoned person," he said. "I have made mistakes and I am not going to defend myself. You go through different periods. Sometimes you enjoy the game, sometimes you wish you were doing something else. I think everybody goes through this. But it is all a learning experience and I think it will stand me in good stead in my approach to life and in my cricket too."

Having scotched any idea "of having a problem with being led", and having accused the press of sensationalising rumours of rifts with Walsh and Ambrose, he then waxes eloquent of the challenge ahead. "Captaining my country instead of my island or Warwickshire [whom he will lead this summer] is a different level. I have done it for one game against India, which was very successful, but I know the pressure is greater. I will take my time getting into it but I would love to start with a winning note. That's what I am trying to instil into the guys. That is what we must do."

But what of his own game? "I am a more seasoned player too," he said. "I have had good times, maybe not the same heights as 1994, but good times. I have also had times when things were down for me and I have learnt a lot. When I scored 216 this month I went out with the idea of staying there and was able to do it. I thought afterwards that there were times for this approach, not trying to appeal to the crowds but just to stay there for as long as possible."

This may sound a bit rich from a man who managed but 12 minutes that afternoon, albeit on a bowlers' paradise of a pitch which had seen 30 wickets fall in two days. But his long-term friend, the talented radio broadcaster and former Trinidad cricketer Ruskin Mark, is convinced he has already detected a change. "Brian's begun to want to occupy the crease rather than dominate it," said Ruskin. "He will be a very positive captain. He's tactically very sound and he's always wanting to win."

Others are not so sure. Trinidad coach Bryan Davis has wondered in admiration at Lara since he first handled him as a teenager. "Obviously, he is much more experienced than he was," said Davies, who won caps for the West Indies as an opener and was in Tony Lewis's championship-winning team at Glamorgan in 1969. "But Brian used to practise all the time. He doesn't do that so much now. And as for what happened today [Ambrose switching to round the wicket and promptly having Lara caught behind], that is what Glenn McGrath was doing to him in Australia. It's obviously a weakness."

Also in the unconvinced camp is former West Indies wicketkeeper Deryck Murray, whose clipped black beard is now snowy white. "Brian has to re-think what he was doing when he was making those big scores. Then he could become the best in the world again," he said.

Maybe that is the plan. Lara's round face can still break out into the widest of smiles but it was back into the hard stare when he talked of this week in Jamaica. "I am going to put the problems behind me," he said in conclusion. "I am going out there to the middle determined to make my contribution." Sounds like Judgment Day.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)