Sunday, February 23, 2014
BRIAN CHARLES LARA, (born
2 May 1969) is a former West
Indian international cricket player. He is widely acknowledged as one of
the greatest batsmen of his era and one of the finest ever to have
graced the game. He topped the Test batting rankings on several occasions and holds several
cricketing records, including the record for the highest individual score in first-class cricket, with 501 not out
forWarwickshire against Durham at Edgbaston in 1994, which is the only quintuple
hundred in first-class cricket history.
Lara also
holds the record for the highest individual score in a test innings after
scoring 400 not out against England at Antigua in 2004. He is the only batsman to have ever
scored a hundred, a double century, a triple century, a quadruple century and a
quintuple century in first class games over the course of a senior career. Lara also holds the test record of
scoring the highest number of runs in a single over in a Test match, when he
scored 28 runs off an over by Robin
Peterson of South Africa in 2003.
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, rated as the
greatest Test match bowler ever by Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, and the highest wicket-taker in both Test cricket and in One Day Internationals (ODIs),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 prestigious BBC
Overseas Sports Personality of the Year, the other two being Sir Garfield Sobers and Shane
Warne.
Brian
Lara was appointed honorary member of the Order
of Australia on 27 November 2009. On 14 September 2012 he was inducted
to theICC's Hall of Fame at the
awards ceremony held in Colombo, Sri Lanka as a 2012-13 inductee along with
Australian Glenn McGrath and former England women all-rounder Enid Bakewell.
Brian
Lara is popularly nicknamed as "The Prince of Port of Spain" or
simply "The Prince". He
has the dubious distinction of playing in second highest number of test matches
(63) in which his team was on losing side, just behind Shivnarine Chanderpaul (68).
Lara was the 10th of 11 children.
Lara's father Bunty and one of his older sisters Agnes Cyrus enrolled him in
the local Harvard Coaching Clinic at the age of six for weekly coaching
sessions on Sundays. As a result, Lara had a very early education in correct
batting technique. Lara's first school was St. Joseph's Roman Catholic primary.
He then went to San Juan secondary, which is located in Moreau Road, Lower
Santa Cruz. A year later, at fourteen years old, he moved on to Fatima College where he started his development as a
promising young player under cricket coach Mr. Harry Ramdass. Aged 14, he
amassed 745 runs in the schoolboys' league, with an average of 126.16 per
innings, which earned him selection for the Trinidad national under-16 team. When
he was 15 years old, he played in his first West Indian under-19 youth
tournament and that same year, Lara represented West Indies in Under-19
cricket.
Lara
moved in with his future fellow Trinidadian cricketer Michael Carew in Woodbrook, Port of Spain (a 20 minute drive from Santa Cruz).
Michael's father Joey Carew worked with him on his cricketing and
personal career development. Michael got Lara his first job at Angostura Ltd.in the marketing
department. Lara played in Trinidad and Tobago junior soccer and table
tennis sides but Lara believed
that cricket was his path to success, saying that he wanted to emulate his
idols Gordon Greenidge, Viv Richards and Roy
Fredericks.
Lara has dated former Durham
County Cricket Club receptionist and British lingerie model Lynnsey Ward. During the West Indies tour to
Australia in late 2000, Lara was accompanied by Ward.
Lara is
the father of two girls one called Sydney (born 1996) whom he fathered with
Trinidadian journalist and model Leasel Rovedas. Sydney was named as a tribute
to one of Lara's favourite grounds, the Sydney
Cricket Ground, where Lara scored his first Test century- the highly acclaimed
277 in the 1992–93 season. His second daughter Tyla was also with Leasel
Rovedas she was born in 2010.
His
father died in 1989 of a heart attack and his mother died in 2002 of cancer.
In 2009,
Lara was made an honorary Member of the Order
of Australia (AM) for services to
West Indian and Australian cricket.
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