LARA: The England Chronicles is Brian Lara in his own voice, unfiltered and unrestrained.
The true untouchables of sport possess a kind of mystery, and Lara – thrillseeker, record holder, genius – stands as perhaps cricket’s deepest enigma, at once a beautifully free strokemaker whose creativity captured an era, and an often tortured presence at the heart of a faltering West Indies side as the great teams of the past faded from view.
He saved his best work for England. His two world-record Test innings both came against them, ten years apart. His otherworldly 501*, the highest score in cricket history, took place in Birmingham. Even his final game for the West Indies came against England.
He understood what was at stake, what he stood for. Lara saw himself as a torchbearer for generations of revolutionary cricketers from the Caribbean stretching back through the ages, their deeds reilluminated with flashes of his own. It was against this backdrop that Lara produced some of the most extraordinary batting ever seen on the cricket field.
“If the period between the wars was about black West Indians fighting for a spot in the team, and the Fifties and Sixties about showing our colonial masters that we can govern ourselves, then the Seventies and Eighties were about showing the world that when we’re strong and united, we’re untouchable.
“I barrelled through all this stuff, all the while wondering how all this history, all these stories, would infuse what was still to come. How, I dared wonder, would the Nineties be remembered? We were arriving at my own time.”
Thirty years since his first world record, and twenty since he reclaimed it with Test cricket’s only quadruple century, Lara is ready to tell his own story: the incomparable highs and harrowing lows of a life lived on the edge.
Brian Lara is one of cricket’s greatest players. Holder of the world record for the highest Test score and the only player in history to breach the 500-run mark in a first-class innings, the left-hander bestrode the game in the years either side of the millennium. Since retirement he has turned his hand to commentary and coaching – taking charge of Sunrisers Hyderabad in the IPL – and set up the Bunty and Pearl Foundation, a charity in memory of his parents that aims to tackle health and social care issues primarily in his native Trinidad. This is his first fully co-authored book.
