Brian Lara: Batting Genius

April 18 is no ordinary date. On April 18, 1955, the world lost a genius. Albert Einstein, arguably the most famous scientist of all time, passed away. Exactly 39 years later, a genius of another kind was celebrated.

An epic knock of 277, against Australia in January 1993, had announced the arrival of a unique cricketer. Surely, this young man from the Santa Cruz valley in north Trinidad was on the road to greatness. There seemed little doubt he had the stuff champion batsmen are made of.

On April 18, 1994, Brian Charles Lara added an exclamation mark to his emphatic batting statement Down Under, answering conclusively any questions about his pedigree.

Sir Garfield Sobers was on hand, at the Antigua Recreation Ground (ARG), to see his 36-year-old Test batting record fall, at the hands of cricket?s latest genius.

In 1958, at Sabina Park, Jamaica, the great Barbadian allrounder had piled up a massive score of 365, against Pakistan.

But records are made to be broken. England pacer Andy Caddick unwillingly got into the record books when Lara drove him to the extra-cover boundary to draw level with Sobers.

In an interview with Red Stripe Quarterly (RSQ), after his world record knock, Lara looked back fondly on that moment.

?To be able just to share the record with Sir Garry was overwhelming. He is such a great man. I never saw him play international cricket but what I?ve heard from everyone, he had to be a great cricketer.?

The young and inexperienced, yet assured, Shivnarine Chanderpaul was not going to keep back history. The Guyanese batsman took a single off the second ball of the next over, bringing Lara into strike to face Chris Lewis. The England quickie bustled in and pounded the ball into a pitch that had offered no encouragement to the bowlers.

A short ball was the perfect offering for Lara. He pulled the sphere to the boundary to reach 369, claiming sole ownership of the world record.

?He (Lewis) was quite expensive over the first two days but he did bowl a much tighter line that day and made things pretty hard for me. But the minute I saw him running in to bowl that ball, the energy I saw him putting in, I kind of predicted it was going to be short. I latched onto it pretty early and got it away.?

The scenes that followed were tremendous. Uninhibited, spontaneous celebration swallowed Lara. He had been a colossus at the crease, but disappeared when the forest of ARG spectators migrated from the stands to the field.

It took a while, but finally, King Sobers got to his heir. With a warm, genuine hug, the mantle had been passed to the Prince of Port of Spain.

"Just to be on par with him, statistics-wise, was great," Lara told RSQ. "Yes, to get there with a four and then to pass it with another four erased the pressure."

Nothing, after 369, mattered. Exactly what Lara?s final score would be was of little interest. The record had been broken. Cricket fans, and non-fans alike, throughout the region erupted into wild celebration.

Personally, I saw the fateful pull on a television screen, at Trinidad Broadcasting Company (TBC) on Maraval Road. That was all I saw, until the recorded highlights were aired later in the day. Bodies and voices, screaming at maximum volume, had suddenly separated me from the television?s screen and speakers.

A tired Lara finally departed, just before lunch on the third day of that fifth and final Test against England. The Prince, caught by wicketkeeper Jack Russell off Caddick?s bowling, for 375, had spent 12 hours and 46 minutes at the crease, facing 538 balls. He had written his name into the history books, making April 18 his date.

April 18 had previously seen many special cricketing events. But what Lara had done was extra special. That pull to the midwicket boundary, 19 minutes before lunch, had earned him immortality.

Just eight men, before Lara, had laid claim to the Test batting record?Australians Charles Bannerman (165 not out), Billy Murdoch (211) and Donald Bradman (334), England?s Reginald Foster (287), Andy Sandham (325), Wally Hammond (336 not out) and Len Hutton (364), and, of course, Sobers (365 not out).

Englishman Doug Insole and West Indians Irving Shillingford, Malcolm Marshall and Phil Simmons were all born on April 18...in different decades, of course.

And on April 18, 1971, India?s ?Little Master?, Sunil Gavaskar, followed up on his first innings knock of 124, against West Indies, with a second innings 220.

Gavaskar was impressive, and he was a very special talent. But, in 1994, the 25-year-old West Indies star took over as the number one April 18 achiever in cricket history. Gavaskar could take consolation, though, in the fact that Lara?s achievement also catapulted him to the top of the all-time Test batting list, ahead of Sobers, Hutton, Hanif Mohammed, Hammond and even the incomparable Bradman.

But Lara was not done, yet. Playing for Warwickshire, in an English County Championship game against Durham, less than two months after pulling his way past Sobers, the proud Fatima College old boy erased Mohammed?s name from the record books.

The Pakistani great had been run out on 499, falling just one run short of 500, an unprecedented individual score in first class cricket.

On June 6, 1994, Lara set a new precedent, banging the ball to the cover boundary to race past Mohammed. The president of the Test club had also broken the record for the highest individual first class score.

Thanks to 501 not out and 375, Lara is at number two on the "Ten Great T&T Sporting Moments" list.

Scoring a quintuple century is certainly a monumental achievement.

However, April 18, 1994 remains the defining date in Brian Lara?s career. It is the day genius was confirmed.

SOURCE: TRINIDAD EXPRESS