The unparalleled glut of batting records that fell to Brian Lara between April and June 1994 amazed the cricket world and gained global attention beyond the game’s narrow confines. It also prompted an outpouring of national pride in his native Trinidad & Tobago where he was showered with honours and gifts. Yet, while there was understandable joy, there was no real surprise among many of his countrymen at the left-hander’s achievement, simply the feeling that his inevitable date with destiny had arrived rather more suddenly than expected.
Brian Lara put up extraordinary performances for Warwickshire in the summer of 1994, which made him one of the easiest selections as a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in the history of the award.
Trinidadians craved the arrival of a batting superstar they, alone of all the territories that comprise West Indies cricket, had lacked; and Lara had long since provided unmistakable signs that he would fill the void. Even the most cock-eyed optimist could not have foreseen his virtually simultaneous eclipse of both Sir Garfield Sobers’s Test and Hanif Mohammad’s first-class records, but those who had followed his development from the time he first played organised cricket were never in any doubt that it was within the potential of his talent and ambition. There was even talk, not entirely prompted by the euphoria of the moment, that Lara himself would surpass his own standards by the time he was through.
Such confident assessments were based on solid evidence. As a stripling of a lad at Fatima College, in Port-of-Spain, Lara had reeled off seven centuries in a single season of the national inter-school competition at the age of 15. In the annual West Indies’ under-19 championships, he created new standards, averaging over 50 in his four years. In only his second first-class match, when he was not yet 19, he held firm for more than five hours to score 92 against Trinidad & Tobago’s sporting arch-rivals, Barbados, whose attack was led by Joel Garner and Malcolm Marshall.
There is another more threatening consequence of his sudden success and stardom. It places on him an awesome responsibility that not all celebrated young sportsmen can properly handle. With satellite television now spanning the globe, Lara has become cricket’s first truly international megastar. Public expectations will be excessive, and the non-cricketing demands on him persistent.
There are pressures that the great players of the past – even Bradman, Sobers and Viv Richards – did not have to contend with to the same extent. Temperament, as much as talent, is now likely to dictate Brian Lara’s future.
Brian Lara played his last Test in 2006/07, finishing with 11,953 runs at 52.88, the most by anyone at the time. In addition, he scored 10,405 ODI runs from 299 games at 40.48.
