The forgotten masterpiece
In this week’s edition of In Search of West Indies Cricket Roger Seymour looks at one of Brian Lara’s innings during his 1994 run spree.
Thirty years have flown by. It seems like only yesterday Laramania was sweeping the West Indies, and Brian Charles Lara was cresting the wave of his own tsunami as runs flowed from his bats like a spouting geyser whilst he essayed an unprecedented assault on batting records.
The 1995 Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, which selected Lara as one its ‘Five Cricketers of The Year’, dedicated eight and a half pages in its editorial section to Lara’s feats, complemented by three (of the edition’s 12) colour photographs and one in black and white of Sir Garry Sobers and Lara embracing after the world record for the highest score in Test cricket changed hands. The initial line of the ‘Cricketer of the Year’ tribute reads; “The unparalleled glut of batting records that fell to Brian Lara between April and June 1994 amazed the cricket world and gained global attention beyond the game’s narrow confines.”
Every West Indies cricket fan can recall exactly where they were on Monday, 18th April, 1994, at 14 minutes to noon. Time was standing still in the Caribbean; everything had ground to a halt. Everyone was either focused on a television set, or glued to a transistor radio. It was the third morning of the Fifth Test match between England and the West Indies at the Antigua Recreation Ground (ARG), in St John’s. Brian Lara had drawn level with Sir Garry’s Test world record score of 365, which he had attained at Sabina Park, Jamaica, on 3rd March, 1958, against Pakistan.
Chris Lewis, the Guyana-born English all rounder bounded in, as Lara waited patiently, anticipating the inevitable short pitched delivery. In a flash, Lara was back and pulling it through mid-wicket. Long before the ball had reached the boundary, dozens of jubilant spectators poured on to the pitch. It was bedlam; Lara was the new world record holder. In the midst of the wild celebration, as Sir Garry strode to the middle to offer his congratulations, English wicketkeeper Jack Russell stared at the stumps, in particular the off bail which was resting askew of the grooves at the top of the middle and off stumps. No one appeared to realise how close Lara had come to being dismissed. As he completed the shot, his foot had grazed the stumps, dislodging the bail, which, miraculously, didn’t fall. It was Lara’s year.
England series
In eight innings in the five Test matches, Lara had scores of: 83 & 28 (First Test, Sabina Park), 167 (Second, Bourda), 43 & 12 (Third, Queen’s Park Oval), 26 & 64 (Fourth, Kensington Oval), 375 (ARG). Total aggregate 798 runs, at an average of 99.75 per innings.
On 22nd April, the day after the Fifth Test finished in a draw, Lara flew to England to sign a £40,000 contract – a magnanimous sum in those days – with Warwickshire County Cricket Club, as the replacement for the Indian all-rounder Manoj Prabhakar who had withdrawn for the season because of an injury. The sudden shift to northern climes for his first season of county cricket only whetted
Lara’s appetite for run scoring, or rather century making.
On 29th April, in his maiden county first class innings, Lara took 147 off Glamorgan at Edgbaston, Warwickshire’s home ground. A week later, the visiting team, Leicestershire were put to the sword to the tune of 106 and 120 not out. On 23rd May, at Taunton, Somerset’s sporting declaration set the visitors a target of 321 in 95 overs, but a result seemed unlikely when two hours were lost to rain after lunch. Lara responded with the fastest century of the season to date, needing just 72 deliveries, as he raced to 136, leading Warwickshire to an improbable six-wicket victory with 3.2 overs to spare. Commencing with his herculean 375 runs effort, Lara had reeled off five centuries in successive innings, thus equalling Everton Weekes’ West Indian record, and stood on the verge of joining the rarefied company of Don Bradman, C B Fry and Mike Proctor, who had all compiled six in six.
At Lord’s on 27th May, he stumbled against Middlesex for 26 in his initial knock, after edging a catch to the wicketkeeper. In the second innings, he returned to form, with “a scintillating 140 off 147
balls, his sixth hundred in seven innings,” according to the Wisden match report.
Magnum opus
On Thursday, 2nd June, Durham, visiting Edgbaston, batted first after winning the toss, and posted 556 for eight declared. At the close of play on Friday, Lara was 111 not out, having become the first player to compile seven centuries in eight innings. After play was washed out on Saturday, and Durham, short of two bowlers, decided against making a game of it with a sporting declaration, Lara was presented with a blank cheque to continue batting on the Monday. (In the AXA Equity & Law Sunday League game Warwickshire beat Durham by 84 runs, as Lara scored six runs). In an astonishing day of cricket, Lara re-wrote the record books whilst taking his total to an astounding 501 not out, as Warwickshire compiled 810 for four. The Wisden’s county match reports are two-thirds of a page on average, inclusive of a summary and detailed scorecard. This match report warranted two and a half pages, one of which was dedicated completely to Lara’s assault on the highest ever first class score by a batsman and lists all the milestones passed on that fateful day.
Among the slew of records created in Lara’s knock were: highest score on the ground (surpassing Peter May’s 285* versus the West Indies in 1957), equalling Don Bradman’s 1938 feat of reaching 1,000 runs for the season in seven innings, highest score in a first class match in England (erasing Archie Maclaren’s 424 for Lancashire versus Somerset in 1895), most runs scored in one day (previous record 345 by Charlie Macartney, Australians versus Nottinghamshire in 1921), and passing Hanif Mohammad’s first class record of 499 set in Karachi, Pakistan in 1958/59, first player in nearly 200 years of first class cricket to score 500 in an innings.
The English press greeted Lara’s latest gem in greater awe than the 375 epic at St John’s. The Daily Telegraph headlined it as scaling “the highest peak”. Bradman, with 452 not out for New South Wales versus Queensland at Sydney in December 1929, and 334 versus England in the Second Test at Leeds in July 1930 (Bradman’s seventh), was the only other player to ever hold both of the game’s prized summits simultaneously.
After a short four-day break in Trinidad, Lara returned to England to continue his plundering. On 23rd June, the Northamptonshire attack, Curtly Ambrose included, were taken for 197, as Lara equalled Bradman’s 1938/39 record of eight centuries in 11 innings. On 28th July, the first day of Warwickshire versus Derbyshire, at Chesterfield, Lara raced to a “dazzling” century, 142, before lunch on a green pitch which provided a challenge for the other players. Besides Lara, who scored 51 in the second innings, only two of his teammates managed to pass 50, as Warwickshire romped to their sixth successive victory by 139 runs. In August, at home to Nottinghamshire, Lara recorded his only duck of the English season as Warwickshire suffered their lone defeat in the county championship. In the penultimate game of the season, Lara notched his ninth hundred, equalling Alvin Kallicharran’s record set in 1984. His first century in five weeks, 191 from 222 balls took him past the 2,000 milestone for the season, as his side defeated Hampshire by an innings and 95 runs. A last minute replacement, Lara propelled Warwickshire to the most remarkable season in the history of English county cricket, as they won their fourth county championship title. In the previous season, the county had finished in 16th position, thus their leap of 15 places in the table equalled Worcestershire’s 1993 record of 17th to second. Warwickshire also won their second Sunday League title and their first ever Benson & Hedges Cup. The chance to sweep all four trophies went awry when Warwickshire lost the toss in the final of the NatWest Bank Trophy and were asked to bat on a damp wicket. Despite Lara’s innings of 81, Worcestershire won by eight wickets with ten overs to spare. In 15 county matches, Lara had compiled 2,066 runs in 25 innings for an average of 89.82.