:: INDIA EMPIRE ::

AWE INSPIRING

Brian Charles Lara has truly made T and T proud. The outstanding left-handed batsman holds world records for highest Test match runs, highest Test match score and highest First Class score

Brian Charles Lara is a Prince with the bat. An absolute wizard who has wielded the willow like no other in the history of the game. He’s the game’s highest run-getter in Test match cricket. He’s the holder of world records for highest individual scores in Tests (400 not out for the West Indies against England in 2004) and First Class matches (501 not out for Warwickshire against Durham in 1994). He has eight scrores of over 200 in Test matches, second only to the late Sir Don Bradman who had 12. He’s shown an ability to last and conquer, his Test match score of 375 (the highest individual score since Sir Garfield Sobers’ 365 not out) made for the West Indies against England in 1994 was overtaken by Australian Matthew Hayden in 2003. But Lara regained the world record the very next year with an astonishing display of stamina and talent on way to his 400 not out.

Brian Lara has stood solid like the Rock of Gibraltar for his side on so many occasions that is easy to forget the count

The West Indies team in the post Clive Lloyd and Sir Vivian Richards era would have been infinitely poorer had it not had in its midst the precocious talent of Brian Lara. Single-handedly, time and again, he lifted the level of his game, and the spirt of his team, by one sterling performance after another. He’s stood solid like the Rock of Gibraltar for his side on so many occasions, that it is easy to forget the count. Those moments of solidity have rescued West Indies from defeat.

Brian Lara was born in Cantaro, Santa Cruz, Trinidad and Tobago on May 2, 1969. He is 10th in a family of 11 children. His lost his father Bunty Lara in 1988. His mother Pearl Lara passed away in 2002 after suffering from cancer. He himself is father of a eight-year-old daughter, Sydney.

His father and one of his older sisters were the first to recognize young Brian’s exceptional batting talents and enrolled him at the local Harvard Coaching Clinic at the age of six for weekly coaching sessions on Sundays.

Lara’s first school was St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Primary. He then went to San Juan Secondary, but played no cricket there. A year later, at fourteen years old, he moved on to Fatima College.

Lara played in Trinidad and Tobago junior soccer and table tennis sides but cricket was the path to recognition in Trinidad at the time. He had always wanted to emulate his childhood heroes—Gordon Greenidge, Viv Richards and Roy Fredericks.

Today, an entire generation of cricketers is trying to emulate him.