My favourite cricketer: Brian Lara

ALEX TUDOR: I was on the MCC groundstaff when he came over for that 1994 county season and made six hundreds in seven matches – I remember the county bowlers telling me it was like he was taking the mickey

I grew up in south London during the glory days of West Indies cricket, when the stands at The Oval would be filled with people of Caribbean heritage. So, through the late 1980s and early 1990s I’d seen Desmond Haynes, Gordon Greenidge and Viv Richards, plus a bit of Richie Richardson. In terms of fast bowling, Curtly Ambrose was my hero. But Brian Lara just had that fresh face.

When he was on TV it was as if the screen lit up. Both me and Michael Carberry, who’s a very good friend of mine, are slightly old school. We’d sit down to watch old videotapes of cricket, and still do. Carbs loved watching Ricky Ponting and Brian Lara, and he does fantastic impressions of Viv batting!

We’d watch Lara’s 277 against Australia at Sydney, or his 153 not out to win the match at Bridgetown in 1998/99, where West Indies were almost a one-man team. An incredible knock. He played match-winning innings after innings. When he was playing for West Indies it was box-office stuff. You would want to watch him stride out at No.3, because you knew if he got in things would get interesting.

The first time I saw him in the flesh was in South Africa in 1992/93. I was in the country with England Under-15s – we were the first English representative side to tour after apartheid. Freddie was on that tour, plus David Sales, Gareth Batty and David Nash. We went along to Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State to watch a one-day international between South Africa and West Indies, who were also on their first official tour of the country.

We watched Lara score an unbeaten 111, batting with Haynes, and he made it look extremely easy. He always seemed to find the gaps. He was facing one of the fastest bowlers in the world, Allan Donald, but he had so much time to play the ball. From then on, I wanted to follow Lara’s career. Even at that age, I thought this guy was going to turn out to be something special.

That same winter he’d scored 277 at Sydney, batting with Richie Richardson. He played with such ease against a really good attack – Craig McDermott, Merv Hughes, Shane Warne. No one had really heard too much about Lara at that point, but I think that 277 is the greatest one of all. Even above the 375, the 400, or the 153, and the hundreds he made against Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

To do it so soon into his career, away from home, hitting Warne all over the place, was something that marked him out. West Indies were 1-0 down after two Tests, and if Lara and Richardson hadn’t put on that partnership of 293, the Frank Worrell Trophy was heading to Australia after all those years. West Indies went out and won the next Test at Adelaide by one run, then Curtly destroyed the Aussies at Perth.

I’d been lucky enough to see him at close quarters even before he signed for Warwickshire while England were out in the Caribbean in early 1994. Then he made the 375 at Antigua. I was on the MCC groundstaff when he came over for that 1994 county season and made six hundreds in seven matches – I remember the county bowlers telling me it was like he was taking the mickey.

^{Lara still holds the records for the highest Test and first-class scores}

Then he went and got the 501 against Durham. Bowlers were in dismay about how he could hit the same delivery to four different parts of the ground. His batting had flamboyance, class and a lot of skill.

I never did get the chance to bowl against him. It just turned out that way. I was either too young, or not being picked at the time for England. Or knowing me, I was probably injured! I’d wanted the chance to test myself against who I thought was the world’s best batsman at the time.

However, I was 12th man when Lara came to Surrey with Warwickshire in 1998. I always remember that he didn’t warm up with the other Warwickshire lads. He just walked out with his bat, did a few shadow shots, hit a few balls, and then went back to the dressing room. I was put at backward point for some reason, when Joey Benjamin was bowling at him. Joey bowled one just back of a length and Lara blocked it. The next was identical and it despatched it with that signature flick off his hips.

Sadly, I think it will be difficult for a player like Lara to emerge from the Caribbean again. The structure of cricket in the West Indies is all wrong – lads still need to find jobs outside cricket to supplement their income. When Lara was developing, West Indies domestic cricket was still strong, whereas now it’s all about T20.

If you’re good enough, you get picked up by the CPL, then go off and play the IPL, the Big Bash, the BPL or the PSL. There are about eight different leagues you can play in. So T20 is a very attractive option. I’m not sure someone will have the hunger to go out and score the sheer weight of runs at first-class level that Lara did. In the old days it was ‘here’s my stats’; now it’s ‘look in my bank account’. It’s not quite the same currency anymore.

This article was published in the April 2017 edition of The Cricketer - the home of the best cricket analysis and commentary, covering the international, county, women's and amateur game

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