Can Lara Win This Battle?
Mon, Jul 10, '06
Instinct says it is not simply an issue of peevishness by Brian Lara.
More like an ongoing backroom brawl that spilled into a public ring for an entire bout. Without details we speculate, but not without some knowledge of the background of the sparring parties.
Don't forget that this is the legacy moment for Brian Lara and Ken Gordon. They are both at times in their lives when they want to leave something flattering behind. They are big players and for them the stakes are high. They must want to see success in West Indies cricket. Whether they go about it in the right manner is as much a function of their egos and temperaments as it is of the forces they encounter.
Behind both of them ? and not necessarily in supporting roles ? stands that immutable body known as the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), an entity whose corporate strength is survival strategies.
That aside, it was clear from early in the India series that things were amiss. The publication of the absence of contracts conveyed an aggrieved state of affairs far removed from the cordiality of a few months ago. A familiar portent.
Another signal was when Lara began to complain about his requests being ignored by selectors, especially as at that celebratory captaincy/contract press conference he had reminded the WICB that he had previously been consulted on selection issues and he expected this would continue.
It is one of the oddities of the WICB's management style that a letter could mysteriously appear confirming his inclusion on the panel towards the end of the series. A letter dated at the beginning. Given what we know of the constant leaks from within the WICB, could such a letter have existed, unknown, especially after the matter had become a harping point for Lara? Was there no one who could have communicated that to him or the WICB? Who signed the letter?
What of his declaration that his private calls to the board were going unanswered? Is it plausible that the WICB president had been rendered incommunicado because he was in Germany? Was Lara wrong then to go public with his frustration?
It was obvious throughout that he was seething.
At Warner Park, I thought his decision not to enforce the follow-on had more to do with communicating that without the bowlers he'd requested, he didn't have an armoury strong enough to bowl twice in a row.
At Sabina Park, his mocking salute to the state of the pitch was disappointing to see. It ripened the comparisons between him and Rahul Dravid, who played on the same pitches, but whose approach was remarkably different.
Whatever flaw it reveals in character, the whole episode reveals how deeply these issues off the field affect players. Better to see Lara more resolutely among the runs than so intensely wrapped in dispute that he may not have realised what it communicated to his team regarding their capacity to play on that same pitch. Condemned as peevish and spoilt and seen as a pouting prima donna for reconsidering captaincy, his past has glued those labels more strongly than he can peel them off.
Here is a distinct clash between cultures. The 'proper' Afro-Saxon mentality is confronting something that holds no allegiance to the etiquette of facades: "the knife turning/In the bowels of the hours, must not be made public" as Walcott wrote. Yet "Say nothing" is the code that allowed thousands of children to be molested by priests.
His aggravation may have coloured his actions, but he must have felt the same frustration that drove so many other notables to complain about WICB behaviour. We know how Lara stop; and if he has behaved badly this time, has he done so without ample provocation? It could be posited, even if harshly, that Lara cost West Indies an important Test series.
The question is whether he can win a bigger battle.
* This column is republished with permission from the NATION newspaper in Barbados where it first appeared.