The Man Who Could Make Time Stand Still

When you hear deeply agitated fans whine about Kevin Pietersen’s lack of ‘sportsmanship’ in throwing down the stumps to bring the career of Brian Charles Lara to a premature, run-out induced end or express disgust at Pietersen's ridiculously long-drawn celebration at Lara's fall, you know you're talking about a man truly remarkable. And I’m not talking about Pietersen. That Lara's last innings had to end in a run-out was, in many ways, a perfectly symbolic climax to a quite special journey. For one thing, the fact that no bowler could get him out in his last innings reaffirmed Lara's complete and utter dominance over the best bowlers in the business through the years. For another, his teammate Marlon Samuels's very questionable call for a run which clearly didn’t exist was a painful reminder of the lack of support Lara has received from his compatriots throughout his career. And, perhaps most poignantly of all, Lara's controversial dismissal gave the millions of viewers something to talk about, awakening us quite emphatically to the simple truth that all that Lara really stood for during his entire career was entertaining the masses.

I must admit that I didn't quite think of all these things the moment that Lara got out. Right then, all I could think of was how truly horrid a person Marlon Samuels was. The fact that run-outs like the one to have struck Lara today are quite commonplace in cricket or that Lara himself may have been responsible for many a teammate's demise through bad calling didn't quite register in my mind. Nothing else mattered then, except that Lara was out, never to return to hold a bat again. The packed stands gave him a resounding ovation as he departed, but Lara was clearly furious at not being able to produce one more of his magical knocks in his final match. This was hardly a surprise, considering his amazing ability to rise to the special and most significant occasions, an ability that he’s demonstrated with astonishing ease so often in his career.

To say that Lara made batting look beautiful would be saying the obvious, and the oft-repeated. The thing that has always struck me as odd about Lara is that when off the field, his body movements seem a little uncoordinated and disorganized. Even his stance is a little peculiar, a little crooked, with the feet much too close together. It's almost as if his body was made for the cricket field, because the same disorganized frame suddenly acquired a grace that was almost balletic when he held a bat. This may have been repeated a million times before, but Lara's strokeplay was indeed absolute eye-candy - the elegance that he brought to a simple cover drive or the poetic artistry of his movements when he came down the track to the spinners was, there's no other word for it - breathtaking. Even his leaving of the ball was lyrical, as were his defensive blocks - batting looked more like exalted dance than a humdrum matter of scoring runs when he was at the crease. And yet, the power and momentum that he packed into most of his shots would have made Mohammad Ali proud; perhaps this had something to do with that extravagant backlift or the whiplash motion of his wrists, because Lara was anything but raw muscle while batting. No, raw muscle was for mere mortals, not for the colossus that was Brian Lara.

There have been many who have pointed out that Lara was nowhere close to a flawless genius. His mood swings, lack of discipline, arrogance, disdain for rules, and most importantly, rather poor captaincy skills have invited as much scathing criticism as his batting skills have earned awed praise. But what his detractors don't get is that when gifts as extraordinary as Lara has been blessed with find expression in such rapid and spectacular manner as two monumental, record-breaking innings of 375 and 501 mere weeks apart, and that too just 3 years into his young career, it becomes almost impossible to lead an uneventful life. Lara couldn't possibly have discarded his innate flamboyance and penchant for the impossibly glorious in exchange for a disciplined, run-machine career. And he didn't. But we must only be thankful for that, because I scarcely think any cricketer, with the possible exceptions of Shane Warne and Viv Richards, has inspired as passionate a fan following that cut across lines of culture and country as has Lara, which had as much to do with his logic-defying ability to win matches single-handedly as his refusal to conform to norms and follow the straight path. His indescribably brilliant innings of 153 against Australia at Barbados may be remembered for many centuries to come, but so will his child-like knock against Kenya in the 1996 World Cup that prompted calls for his head from many. It takes the good, the bad and the ugly to make a legend, and Lara made sure his mesmerized audience witnessed it all. His incredibly inadequate leadership skills perhaps diluted some of the joy that cricket followers all over the world, and particularly in the Caribbean, derived from his career, but genius must be granted its excesses. Besides, there are some who believe that the reason Lara failed so abysmally in arresting the decline in West Indian cricket through any semblance of inspired leadership is that he could never quite come to terms with the less prodigious abilities of his teammates. A classic case of extraordinary talent being surrounded, even overawed by mediocrity, something which could never really have been experienced by the great captains of history, the Clive Lloyds and the Steve Waughs. Raw, untamed, unfettered genius like Lara's comes only once in a century, but such remarkable flair doesn’t always translate into great team-management prowess, especially if the team you’re asked to manage is abysmally insipid. Ask Sachin Tendulkar.

At the end of the match, some of the English fans in the stands began to shed tears. No, England didn’t lose the match – they actually won by 1 wicket, but this day, all emotions were for Lara. Time seemed to stand still, as it did so often when he was batting, as he walked around the ground, waving to the spectators, shaking hands with the English players, wiping a stray tear or two off his cheek. His grief seemed a little incongruous at such a momentous occasion, but after a moment or two of reflection you realize that it was only appropriate. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that it is Lara who has been defined by the game of cricket, and not the other way round, and that it must have been terribly hard for him to let go of the one thing that roused his passion and emboldened and inflamed him to attain heights dizzying, dazzling, delirious. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that it was not cricket that lived for Lara, but Lara who lived for cricket.

They say that Lara’s most outstanding achievement remains, to this day, his reclaiming of the record for the highest Test score in an innings, exactly ten years to the day he first created it, on the same ground and against the very same opposition. Indeed, this is one feat so awe-inspiring that it is difficult to imagine anyone doing anything to even come close to matching it, ever. In fact, when Matthew Hayden had held the record for a brief while, I remember thinking how frightfully dramatic it would be if Lara were to regain the record, and then brushing the thought off as impossible, even for Lara. I need hardly mention how completely stunned I was when Lara actually went out and shattered the record only six months after Hayden’s feat, with all the poise of an indefatigable champion. And yet, statistics and great cricketing moments mean so little when you talk about someone like Lara. He is one sportsperson who has truly transcended his records and emerged as a legend so full of mystique and wonderment that it is beyond the realms of any kind of numbers. He is the man who, when in the mood, could do anything. And I mean anything. He may have been nicknamed ‘Prince’, but he was more majestic, more glorious, more splendid, more sublime and more imposing than any emperor could ever hope to be.