The Trouble With the 400

Any boy born in the Caribbean nine months from Easter Monday is likely to be named Brian; any girl will certainly be Lara. For the first time in a tortuous Test series, West Indians had something fantastic to celebrate: their captain?s reclamation of the world record highest-ever single Test innings score from Matthew Hayden (whom one hopes had the business sense to sign five-year sponsorship deals six months ago). Spiritually, the Caribbean needed that success as desperately as the success itself was spectacular.

Not even Hayden would diminish Lara's achievement. Anyone doubting the sheer effort might try running 22 yards two or 300 times in a couple of days. (Anyone under 30 should run twice as far.) The athleticism is only the tip of the iceberg. Add the baking Antiguan sun and Steve Harmison thundering down the pitch at 90mph and Lara's achievement transmogrifies into the passion of the Brian. At 34, he managed a physical feat surpassed only by the powers of concentration from which it sprang. Only one other man in Test history has scored two triple centuries at all: Sir Don Bradman. Lara occupies sacred cricketing ground.

No one in the Caribbean feels better than him this week; nor does anyone deserve to; nor should anyone in his right cricketing mind expect to. Lara's mood could be improved only by the birth of a son to join his daughter Sydney, named after the Australian Test venue on which he scored his 277, the innings he and Tony Cozier still rate as his best, notwithstanding two world record triple centuries and the two he scored against Australia immediately after the 51, the then lowest-ever West Indies Test score, which turned the tide against the mighty Australia current and squared the series. If Lara did have a son this week, the boy would undoubtedly be named "Antigua Recreation Ground."

For the rest of us, this Test series should feel rather more like burying both our parents.

It took nearly a decade for Hayden to top Lara's 375, against Zimbabwe; the Brian Lara pension fund seems secure. It may seem something between churlish and treasonous for a Caribbean person to wonder whether Lara's achievement will, in the long run, be as good for West Indies cricket as it is for him. But, if anyone can wander along those lines, it's me: I have a unique talisman against charges of being anti-Lara.

The week before the England vs West Indies series began, the London Sunday Observer asked people who played, commented on or umpired the game, to say, in 50 words or fewer, what they were looking forward to most in the next six months, in which there would be only a few days on which no Test cricket at all would be played. Some mentioned India vs Pakistan. Some chose Australia vs Sri Lanka. I said I wanted to see, "Brian Lara vs the England bowling at the Antigua Recreation Ground and I don't need 50 words, just three figures: 381. Remember you heard it here first."

My English friends were waiting in glee for the end of the last Test, (which, had they won the toss, they would almost certainly have won), to wipe me up and slop me out in the same bucket as the rest of West Indies cricket.

My faith-in-Lara credentials, then, would appear to be above suspicion; but that doesn't mean I can't see the forest rotting for one mighty tree.

The immediate results of the 400 were clearly beneficial. After three humiliations, it saved a great deal of face. To be able to enforce a follow-on, for all its hollowness, was a refreshing change from being trying to avoid one every time we went to bat. The medium term effect is also positive: the West Indies summer tour of England is once again something to be bet on without either snickering or complaining about the punitive odds.

Nor can the captain's decision to bat into the third day be fairly criticised as self-interested. West Indians needed an achievement of historic proportions just to reach emotional neutral. Winning the final Test would not have been nearly enough by itself.

There is nothing in itself wrong with the joy that rippled out from the centre of the ARG throughout the Caribbean diaspora; except that, in the ecstasy of Lara's 400, the bulk of Caribbean, arms upraised, waists gyrating, have already shut their eyes to the 47 of only four weeks ago, and the 94 of last week, in the same way they forgot the 56, the 54 and the 51 before them.

A West Indian win in the last Test would have required what we must now call a collapse of Caribbean proportions from England. But everyone watching was sure it would happen right down to the boring end.

In one boundary, Lara lifts himself back to the individual cricket summit. In his glorious moment, the rest of us forget or dismiss the effort of the 12 hours before it and the history of the last exquisitely painful month. Had Lara not scored 400 runs, he might have found himself sacked as West Indies captain; now he will certainly hold his job.

It does not matter whether you conclude he is the best person for the job, as I do. What matters is, you should make the enquiry in the first place. The trouble with the 400 is the same as it was with the 47: everyone in the Caribbean will feel it, and this week it will feel really, really good; but no one will think about it.

* This column was first published in the Trinidad Guardian newspaper.