B.C Lara. An appreciation

[Richard Jenkins]

Rarely has a batsman in modern cricket had the impact of Lara. Looking just at the stats http://stats.rleague.com/tc/players/B/BC_Lara.html alone is heady stuff; the dissapointment expressed by many an England fan regarding the fact that now he wont tour is praise enough. But was Lara the greatest batsman of his generation? Was he the greatest West Indian since Sir Vivian Richards?

Lara is the only batsman to score over 400 runs in a test. He broke the world record twice. His average is 52 in tests and his highest first class score is 501. In two months in 1994 Lara rewrote the cricket records.

His career seems one of early greatness followed by wilderness and a late flowering. Many will argue that Lara always played for himself but never the team, but the fact that he scored a large percentage of the WI runs over several tours probably disproves this.

His flighty feet will never tread the hallowed grounds of the test circuit again (unless he reconsiders) and the spectacle that was Lara will be missed. Even he asks 'did I entertain?' and the answer is 'yes'.
Test crickets most prolific scorer is a West Indian. He scored 34 hundreds and 48 fifties in 131 tests.
I always rated Lara over the wristy magic of Tendalkur or the brashness or ponting or Matthew Hayden. Technically he was a great player. We won't see the likes of Lara for a long time, or perhaps even again.

His arguments with the WI board have been the stuff of legend, and it seems that this has precipitated his retirement.

Will History remember lara as 'the best since Bradman' or will it be something else?