Brian Charles Lara
Brian Charles Lara, TC, OCC, AM (born 2 May 1969) is a former Trinidadian international cricket player. He is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest cricketers of all-time. 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 for Warwickshire 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 century, 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 shares 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 (matched in 2013 by Australia’s George Bailey).
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 the ICC’s Hall of Fame at the awards ceremony held in Colombo, Sri Lanka as a 201213 season inductee along with Australians Glenn McGrath and former England women all-rounder Enid Bakewell.In 2013, Lara received Honorary Life Membership of the MCC becoming the 31st West Indian to receive the honor.
Brian Lara is popularly nicknamed as “The Prince of Port of Spain” or simply “The Prince”. He has the dubious distinction of playing in the second highest number of test matches (63) in which his team was on the losing side, just behind Shivnarine Chanderpaul (68).
Early life:
Brian was the 10th of 11 children. His 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 School, which is located on 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.
Personal life:
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 199293 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.
Records:
Lara struck 277 runs against Australia in Sydney, his maiden Test century, the fourth highest maiden Test century by any batsman, the highest individual score in all Tests between the two teams and the fourth-highest century ever recorded against Australia by any Test batsman.
He became the first man to score seven centuries in eight first-class innings, the first being the record 375 against England and the last being the record 501 not out against Durham.
After Matthew Hayden had eclipsed his Test record for highest individual score 375 by five runs in 2003, he reclaimed the record scoring 400 not out in 2004 against England. With these innings he became the second player to score two Test triple centuries, the second player to score two career quadruple centuries, the only player to achieve both these milestones, and regained the distinction of being the holder of both the record first-class individual innings and the record Test individual innings. He is the only player to break the world record twice.
In the same innings, he became the second batsman to score 1000 Test runs in five different years, four days after Matthew Hayden first set the record.
He was the all-time leading run scorer in Test cricket, a record he attained on 26 November 2005 until surpassed by Sachin Tendulkar on 17 October 2008.
He was the fastest batsman to score 10,000 (with Sachin Tendulkar) and 11,000 Test runs, in terms of number of innings.
He scored 34 centuries; joint-fifth along with Sunil Gavaskar, on the all-time list behind Sachin Tendulkar (51), Jacques Kallis (45), Ricky Ponting (41) and Rahul Dravid (36).
He has the most centuries for a West Indian
Nine of his centuries are double centuries (surpassed only by Kumar Sangakkara and Donald Bradman)
Two of them are triple-centuries (matched by Australia’s Donald Bradman,India’s Virender Sehwag, and West Indies’ Chris Gayle).
He has scored centuries against all Test-playing nations. He achieved this feat in 2005 by scoring his first Test century against Pakistan at the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown, Barbados.
He became the sixth batsman to score a century in one session, doing so against Pakistan on 21 November 2006.
Lara has scored an 20% of his team runs, a feat surpassed only by Bradman (23%) and George Headley (21%). Lara scored 688 runs (42% of team output, a record for a series of three or more Tests, and the second highest aggregate runs in history for a three-Test series) in the 200102 tour of Sri Lanka.
He also scored a century and a double century in the third Test in that same Sri Lanka tour, a feat repeated only five other times in Test cricket history.
He has scored the most runs (351) on a losing side in a Test.
He scored the largest proportion (53.83 per cent) of his team’s runs in a Test (221 out of 390 and 130 out of 262). He eclipsed the long-standing record of 51.88 per cent by the South African J. H. Sinclair (106 out of 177 and 4 out of 35) against England at Cape Town in an 18981899 series.
Lara holds the world record of scoring most runs in a single over (28 runs against left-arm spinner RJ Peterson of South Africa) in Test cricket. He also scored 26 runs in a single over off the bowling of Danish Kaneria at Multan Cricket Stadium on 21 November 2006.
He scored the ninth fastest Test century, doing so off 77 balls against Pakistan on 21 November 2006.
With 164 catches, He is the eighth all-time catch-taker of non-wicketkeepers, behind Rahul Dravid, Mahela Jayawardene, Jacques Kallis, Ricky Ponting, Mark Waugh, Stephen Fleming and Graeme Smith.
In 1994, he was awarded the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Overseas Personality Award. In 1995, he was chosen as one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year.
Comfortably averaging over 50 per innings (the benchmark for batting greatness in Test cricket), Lara has been ranked the number one batsman in Test cricket in the PricewaterhouseCoopers Cricket Ratings several times.
Lara has played some of his best innings in recent years. Wisden published a top 100 list in July 2001, a distillation of the best performances from 1,552 Tests, 54,494 innings and 29,730 bowling performances. Three innings by Lara were placed in the top 15 (the most for any batsman in that range). His 153 not out in Bridgetown, Barbados, during West Indies’ 22 home series draw against Australia in *19981999 was deemed the second greatest Test innings ever played, behind Bradman’s 270 against England in the Third Test of the 19361937 series at Melbourne.
Career statistics:
Test
Matches: 131
Runs scored: 11953
100s/50s: 34/48
Top score: 400*
ODI
Matches: 299
Runs scored: 10405
100s/50s: 19/63
Top score: 169
