In Trinidad and Tobago, cricket is one of the most popular sporting disciplines and that sport’s most acclaimed star is Brian Charles Lara, a gifted, compact left-handed batsman considered one of the world’s best ever.
Born May 2, 1969, in Cantaro, Trinidad, Lara was first selected for the West Indies senior team in 1991 and within three years he broke fellow West Indies great Sir Garfield Sobers’ 36-year-old Test runs record of 365 with his 375 against England.
And he also broke the first-class record when he posted 501 not out for Warwickshire, the only score to date to have gone past 500 runs.
And ten years later he became the first cricketer to reclaim the Test runs innings record when he posted 401 not out to break Matthew Hayden’s 380 runs scored the previous year.
Lara’s match-winning performance of 153 not out against Australia in Bridgetown, Barbados in 1999 has been rated by Wisden as the second-best batting performance in the history of Test cricket, next only to the 270 runs scored by Sir Donald Bradman in The Ashes Test match of 1937.
Muttiah Muralitharan has hailed Lara as his toughest opponent among all batsmen in the world.
Lara was awarded the Wisden Leading Cricketer in the World awards in 1994 and 1995 and is also one of only three cricketers to receive the BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year, the other two being Sir Garfield Sobers and Shane Warne.
Ten years ago, Brian Lara was inducted into the International Cricket Council Hall of Fame. Also, the man more popularly known as “The Prince of Port of Spain” boasts a Test record of 131 matches decorated with 34 centuries, 48 half-centuries and a total of 11,963 runs at an average of 52.88 and the highest score of 400 not out.
In One-Day Internationals, he played 299 matches, scoring 10,405 runs at an average of 40.48 and the highest score of 169. He counted 19 tons and 63 half-centuries.
