'How Much Lara Mek?'

I have no particular credentials to pass sage and sanguine utterances on any form of cricket. But I am a fan. In particular, I am a fan of West Indies Cricket. I have been for a long time and cricket, especially West Indian cricket, is my passion. So, in as much as a passionate fan gets to represent himself, I will represent. Take it for what it is.

So on this early Easter Monday morning Brian Charles Lara (BCL), star batsman and proud West Indies cricket captain, stands poised to reassume the mantle of record breaking batsman, having scored the most runs in any one innings. The premier batsman in a premier list of premium names. The sheer enormity of what he is accomplishing is testimony to the sheer will and boundless talent which resides in the body, soul and mind of Brian Charles Lara. The Prince of Port of Spain rises as an irresistible force.

Therefore, in the above sense, BCL is the right man at the right moment in the annals of West Indian cricket. In my opinion when the dust settles, this will properly be deemed as Lara's finest hour. His most magnificent innings, because it has been made in the most inauspicious circumstances. Despite what people may now say, he arrived in Antigua with the heavy baggage of abysmally low scores (100 runs in six innings). With questions being asked of his eyes and issues being raised around his weight. In Jamaica, Trinidad and Barbados he had jumped, flinched, turned his back, and demoted himself to number 6 in the batting order (apparently not interested in facing the fire before lionhearted Ridley Jacobs). A flattish track and the man becomes the champion batsman once again.

This innings may will be recorded as the greatest individual testimony of the indomitable will, resolve and genius of the human spirit (and its capacity to resist) - all personified by this Prince from Port of Spain. A home-series whitewash loomed. It was the day of the long knives. By close of play even the Barmy Army was in awe. Wisden Cricinfo puts it best, "They came to bury Lara, but not for the first time, they were compelled to praise him".

So kudos for Lara - once again.

Hilary Beckles, the well known academic at Cave Hill, has written that BCL is the key to West Indian revival. By that I think what he must mean is that a string of good individual performances will galvanize a young, green West Indies team into a professional unit of equal majesty to times gone by. To me that is an awful amount of supposition and I shall say why.

BCL captains and leads West Indies cricket. And it is here that I want to now focus.

No less than:

1. Colin Croft
2. Michael Holding
3. Ritchie Richardson
4. Andy Roberts (who prepared this Fourth Test pitch splendidly for BCL)
5. Tony Cozier

came with long knives "to bury Caesar not to praise him". These are enormous individual names in the recent cricketing past of the WI. Taken together, there ought to be enough there to get people of all shades and complexions to focus their attention. Do these collective big names in West Indies cricket, represent malcontent and ill will? Are they jealous rivals? Sinful and "bad minded" people? Casting first stones?

After this almost certain second world record breaking innings Lara is almost certain to be made captain-for-life. And the astonishing thing is that half the people will say; "So he jolly well should". The other half of the people will try to argue something else. Why?

To answer the question is to engage with passion, personality, culture, politics and perception. Other writers have started the process. The Ancient Mariner argues, that the record breaking innings, is tantamount to a "Rebellion of Massive Proportions" and as he does so he invokes the specter of a revolutionary hero Franz Fanon. Wisden Cricinfo on the other hand, puts it another way;

The imagery is stark, and the contrast/divergence about as high as the Kaiteur Falls, as wide as The Grand Canyon. Life is complex. And in order to make sense out of seeming nonsense, we have to "abstract." Abstraction is the process of picking out the salient features of this or that set of circumstances. I want to tell a story, where it can be legitimately claimed that Brian Charles (in the best interest of West Indies) ought not to Captain, at least not for much longer. In other words, I want to support the notion of root and branch change, along Cricinfo lines. I'm not in the Wisden Cricinfo camp, neither am I in the Rebellion camp. I want to offer an interpretation along revolutionary lines.

WI cricket needs a revolution not a rebellion and the magnificent innings of BCL retards the revolutionary process. A revolutionary interpretation of Fanon would conclude with BCL the wrong man, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. So, "until the revolution comes."

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