Playing With Fire Once Too Often (6 November 1998)

6 November 1998

Playing With Fire Once Too Often

by Tony Cozier

Sadly, shockingly, but all too predictably, it was always going to come to this.

Throughout his adult cricketing life, Brian Lara has been on a collision course with authority.

Time and again, the head-on crash that would shatter him and all around him was avoided only by the faint-hearted who pulled to one side and gave him leeway to continue on his way.

It has finally occurred, as it had to, as the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), weary of repeatedly giving over, has stood its ground. The sickening sound of the resulting impact is still reverberating around the Caribbean and the cricket world and the fallout remains unclear.

This time, Lara is not only casualty. There are a host of team-mates with him, and he was probably not even the driver, while the board, already battered by a succession of unrelated mishaps, is once more severely dented.

In the meantime, the mangled body of West Indies cricket itself lays limply by the wayside, waiting for some Good Samaritan to bring it back to life. As of now, the prognosis isn't encouraging.

It would probably not have come to this had the board taken from the beginning the same firm stance against indiscipline and open defiance as it has done now.

There were those, a minority it is true, who warned against weakness. But the board recognised Lara's genius, attributed his mercurcial temperament to it and were, also given his overwhelming popularity, loathe to act against his indiscretions.

It was a position that also dictated its attitude to Carl Hooper, another cricketer of exceptional talent, now subject to the same belated punishment.

Lara's capacity for extending the limits of batsmanship, with his record scores of 375 in the Antigua Test against England in April, 1994, and 501 not out in a first-class county match in England six weeks later, was matched only by that for extending the limits of the game's code of discipline.

There were those who, from early, saw the signs of a gifted, sensitive young man affected by the sudden surge of fame and fortune and warned of potential self-destruction.

Wes Hall, his former team manager, called it "an albatross around his neck". Michael Holding, the great fast bowler turned respected commentator, even saw the need for psychological help, a course followed by Hooper during his depressed times in England in 1995.

Others would have none of such negative talk. To hundreds of thousands of West Indians, Lara was, and still is, a darling, the latest of the great cricketers.

Gerry Gomez, the late Trinidad and Tobago and West Indies all-rounder and administrator, a man not prone to overstated sentiment, hailed him as "an integral part of West Indies cricket, produced under our own auspices and guidance and made available to the world as one of its most valuable ingredients and attractions".

The Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board (TTCB) was his strongest supporter, even carrying its concerns to the WICB that "there is a calculated plot to tarnish the image and international reputation using Brian's past indiscretions as the basis for sowing seeds of discontent".

Trusting that the responsibility would prompt an overdue maturity, and sure of his obvious knowledge and grasp of the game, the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) appointed Lara captain last January in place of the long-serving Courtney Walsh. The same theory would have been one of the reasons for the simultaneous elevation of Hooper to be Lara's vice-captain.

On the field, Lara's success was immediate, even if his own batting touch waned. A 3-1 triumph over England in the Test series, 4-1 in the One-day internationals, wiped away the despondency of a 3-0 thrashing in Pakistan only a few months earlier and a new spirit seemed to be building in the side.

He himself spoke earnestly of his expectations for the tour that is now in such doubt only hours before making the fateful journey from Dhaka to London that precipitated the current crisis.

Yet, beyond the boundary, Lara, and Hooper too, were to test the nerve and the patience of the board one more time and, to the astonishment of everyone, the board has said enough is enough and taken sterner disciplinary action than it has ever done against any of its team leaders.

In the past three years, Lara has twice pulled out of West Indies tours: in England in 1995 when only the intervention of the then president of the board, Peter Short, coaxed him back, and later that year two days before the team left for Australia.

Three times Lara has been fined and reprimanded on various charges and cautioned by the board about his future conduct.

Each time he apologised and played on. Hooper withdrew from the 1996 World Cup because, according to Lara at the time, of problems within the team and declined to play in the 1997 Hong King Sixes, for which he had been made captain, because of a disagreement with the organisers.

He has also been acquainted with the WICB's disciplinary committee.

Like Lara, he was fined 10 per cent of his match fee for going absent without leave near the end of the 1995 England tour and, last season, flouted the instructions of the selectors to play for Guyana between the third and fourth Tests against England.

A man of few words, Hooper has seldom seemed comfortable with the board since he complained of its neglect of his plight while a back ailment kept him out of the 1994 home series against England. He then placed his priorities as his fitness first, Kent - his English county team - second and the rest after that.

During his unsettling period in England in 1995, Lara proclaimed to manager Hall that "cricket is ruining my life" and actually announced his retirement.

Now they must again wonder what the future holds. What a misdirection of wonderful, God-given talent with which so few are blessed.

Source :: The Barbados Nation (https://www.nationnews.com/)