Bryan Davis

At Sydney, Australia, in his fifth Test match in the year 1993, Brian Lara scored 277 runs before he was run out. It was his first Test century, which he turned into a double. This was the innings that stamped his name on the cricketing world, a name that would become the most popular to ever take part in a cricket game. 

Lara, with this Sydney innings, also raised the expectations of West Indian cricket fans that the line of great batsmen that started with the legendary George Headley would continue. That he did not disappoint is now history but what is unknown and probably guessed at, is his impact upon the game, its popularity, and the spell which he cast upon it.

The late Noel Guillen passed on to me his cricket coaching school, which took place on Sunday mornings at the Queen’s Park Oval in the early 1970s.  I was running this clinic for young cricketers for some 20 years when Lara created his epic innings described above in January 1993.

The classes over the years ranged in number from 25 boys to 50 but never more than that. Within two weeks of Lara’s magnificent innings the number of young cricketers who wanted to attend more than doubled!

There were now between 90 and 100 boys all between 8 and 16 years old traipsing to the Oval for cricket lessons. I’m sure the same thing happened at the Harvard Club (which had an even greater number of boys) where Lara received his initial and oh so important coaching tutelage.

I had to bring in more coaches to handle the overflow caused by the explosiveness of the young left-handed batting phenomenon on the world stage.  I wrote a piece at the time for the Parkite magazine in which I coined the word “Laramania” as a direct result of the sheer numbers of not only boys for coaching, but too, the parents using their influence to get their off-spring interested in cricket. To this day I have never seen anything like it.

Cricket at the time was accepted as a pastime by people who did not know much about the game and would gladly tell you how boring it was and what little interest they had in it. They had just a passing curiosity in West Indies scores and results.

This one fantastic innings by the boy from Santa Cruz changed the image of the game. I thought at the time that it was only in Trinidad and Tobago because we were witnessing the birth of a star batsman with the emphasis on “star”; but to my eventual and pleasant surprise it seemed to have dawned on the Caribbean as a whole that this was the start of something special.

Brian Lara

It seemed that this baby-faced, diminutive and charismatic son of Trinidad soil was destined to achieve greatness beyond compare.  Trinidad and Tobago had never spawned a batting hero like Headley of Jamaica, the three Ws and Garfield Sobers of Barbados, Rohan Kanhai of Guyana, Vivian Richards of Antigua and so on. 

But now here was someone that even the man-in-the-street KNEW that greatness was on its way. People who never cared about the game now glued themselves to the television or radio when this exciting batsman was at the wicket.

In Port-of-Spain offices would be empty when Lara was at the crease and when he was out some of the crowd would disperse having had their fill of what they wanted to see.

No one in the history of West Indian cricket had such an impact on the game in these parts. All our famous cricketers, and there have been many, played their part and helped develop the game but the influence of this young Fatima College-educated youth was something not heard of before.

At parties, social gatherings, sports meetings, the name of Lara was talked about.  But what was the most amazing thing to me was the actual interest in cricket that this lad brought out of citizens.

The summer of 1994 in England after Brian had claimed the world record batting score for a single innings against England in Antigua, he rubber stamped his genius in innings after innings for Warwickshire in county cricket in England. There were numerous records broken as he rampaged through the green fields of Britain. 

Not satisfied with having the highest individual score in a Test innings he barrelled on after seven consecutive centuries to make the highest first class score his own. And this happened just six weeks after the 375 he established as the Test record. This time the target was even higher – 499 held by the Pakistani Haniff Mohammed.  Lara blasted his way to 501 not out.

At the end of that summer he toured India with the West Indies team and the crowds at the airports to greet this batting genius had to be seen to be believed! I was there and witnessed scenes that I feel sure not even royalty would have attracted. There was such a fuss that armed army personnel and police force had to be deployed at every landing lest the “cricket wonder” be hurt in the crush.

By this time the sheer weight of his popularity was getting him down and he lamented his lack of privacy. We had some chats about his life and how it was going to be at the top and he understood that it would never be easy again.

But anyone not witnessing these adoring fans, always ready to submerge him in adoration would find it difficult to understand. If I did not see it for myself I would have been hard to convince.

For those who think that criticism would have shaken Brian I could inform them that it never deterred him from his goals. He understood that it came with the territory. And for those who believe that media criticism chased him away and advanced his retirement I would let them know that Brian was never narrow-minded enough to allow that to influence him.

I was surprised that he retired because he intimated not long ago that he would retire from one-day internationals but would continue in Test cricket until into his forties. He also said that he couldn’t wait to get into whites again and play in the upcoming tour of the UK.

His reasons for leaving, therefore, have to do with selection, captaincy or other cricket-related matters and not with the media. The international sportsman who allows the media to get at him would fizzle out in a flash and most certainly not last as long as Lara did.

He always had more strength and character than his apologists gave him credit for. His sixteen years at the highest level gave us joy, ecstasy, rapturous delight; sadness and disappointment; but even so it was always a pleasure.

His impact on the game of cricket, his responsibility for bringing so many people to know it, understand it and love it will always be the legacy of the genius of Brian Charles Lara.