The method behind the genius, the early-morning vision behind the epics
Lara is a beautiful name. Rhythmic, small and epic. It is a classic film theme, an animated heroine, and in cricket it is a poem that sings like a song. Like in Jean "Binta" Breeze's "Song for Lara":
if de bowler fine a reason
ah will answer wid a rhyme
any kine a riddim
in mi own time.
The answers in any kind of riddim, the innings orchestral. They beat about the body, stay in the system. Like steel band resonation, like the Renegades doing "Pan in a Rage", or "Four Lara Four" for that matter, batting that vibrates long after it is over, slowing perhaps but never coming to a stop.
That is one way (though only one) of thinking about the results of the Cricket Monthly exercise. It's a list tingling with the Lara sensation. Consider his rough contemporaries who have no entries in the 50: Sanga, Jayawardene, Inzamam, Chanderpaul, Hayden, Kirsten, Ponting, Kallis, Tendulkar. Lara? Four. For the 50 years in consideration, nobody has as many, batsman, bowler or allrounder. Four Lara Four! All four in the top 30, three in the top 20, one of those in the top five: 153 not out in Barbados.
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