The greatest Test of all? (1 April 1999)

1 April 1999

The greatest Test of all?

Tony Cozier in Bridgetown

Australian captain Steve Waugh called it "the best Test match I've ever played in" and, for the 33-year-old veteran, it was his 114th.

"It was a great match and great for cricket," said triumphant West Indies captain Brian Lara after his masterful, unbeaten 153 had carried his team to a pulsating one-wicket victory in the Third Test at Kensington Oval on Tuesday.

Lara played down his own innings, praising the team effort instead. But manager Clive Lloyd called the knock "genius stuff".

"You dream of watching these kinds of innings," he said.

The international press yesterday backed their assessment.

"The greatest Test ever played?" asked the London Evening Standard in its headline.

"Lara epic attains a Titanic ending," was the Melbourne Age headline over its report from Kensington Oval by correspondent Malcolm Knox.

"Lara stands tall to lead West Indies from front," was how the London Daily Telegraph put it.

"What can be said for certain is that no one who was present at Barbados, whether spectator or player, will ever forget hour after hour of incredible, nerve-knotting action," Evening Standard writer David Lloyd reported.

"After trailing throughout most of the match, after such a glorious fightback and after such a captain's knock, the West Indies deserved the sweet taste of victory-and none more than Lara who played one of the greatest innings ever in one of the greatest Test matches ever," Tony Becca, sports editor of the Jamaica Daily Gleaner, wrote.

"It is hard not to be overwhelmed by such a match and such a finish," Knox wrote in the Age. He was critical of Australia's play that left them 2-1 down in the series of four Tests, the last starting in St John's, Antigua, on Saturday.

"The West Indies seized and won this match but some confused Australian thinking with the bat and on the field allowed them in," he wrote. "The West Indies are, at this moment, a greater side than Australia because their resolve has been stronger and their inspiration richer."

"Genius brings islands alive," was the headline over Malcolm Conn's report in The Australian.

"After a terrible time, when the West Indies lost six Tests in a row, Lara has transcended the world of a mortal cricketer and taken the West Indies team with him," Conn wrote. "With a double century in Jamaica and this extraordinary performance, Lara has engineered the greatest turnaround in Test history."

For Peter Roebuck, former captain of English county team, Somerset, and now cricket writer for the Sydney Morning Herald, Lara's innings was "one of the greatest innings in the history of cricket and the best it had been my privilege to watch".

"Lara's innings surpassed his superb effort at Sabina Park (213 in the Second Test) and was even better than his 277 in Sydney in 1993 because it was played in such tense circumstances with the entire match resting on his shoulders," Roebuck wrote.

Source :: The Trinidad Express (https://www.trinidad.net/express/)