Nass­er Khan

April marks the an­niver­sary month of Bri­an Lara's Sobers-sur­pass­ing Test score of 365, when he rat­tled up 375 against Eng­land in 1994 at An­tigua Recre­ation Ground. This record had stood for 36 years. April, 2010, marks the an­nounce­ment that the Prince of Port-of-Spain could be com­ing out of his all too pre­ma­ture re­tire­ment, re­turn­ing to play in the T20 for­mat of the game. The world and his fans await with bat­ed breath. Bri­an Lara turns 41 on May 2nd. In 1994, the year he turned 25, he fol­lowed up his epic 277 in 1993 at Syd­ney, Aus­tralia–he even named his new­born daugh­ter Syd­ney–with an amaz­ing string of scin­til­lat­ing, stroke-filled and record-break­ing per­for­mances, the likes of which had nev­er been wit­nessed be­fore, or since.

Bun­ty and Pearl's son did them proud, as he bran­dished his blaz­ing wil­low to such dizzy­ing heights that TIME and Sports Il­lus­trat­ed mag­a­zines (as well as CNN) were com­pelled to trum­pet his Sobers-break­ing, chance­less Test record of 375 (537 min­utes, 45 fours) ver­sus Eng­land at An­tigua Recre­ation Ground, in April, 1994. Lara­ma­nia had cap­tured the crick­et­ing world, and a gen­er­a­tion of Lara-watch­ers was born. Do you re­call where you were on that morn­ing in April, 1994? I vivid­ly re­mem­ber go­ing to wit­ness this phe­nom­e­nal feat on that ear­ly spring morn­ing at a West In­di­an restau­rant in Toron­to, Cana­da, that had ac­cess to satel­lite cov­er­age back then. It was filled to ca­pac­i­ty!

LEFT: Crick­et leg­end Bri­an Lara, left, gives US Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma a free bat­ting les­son at the new­ly re-named Oba­ma Ter­race at Hilton Trinidad, St Ann's.

But be­fore he achieved his amaz­ing 375 feat, there was an­oth­er in­nings of great­ness, sheer ge­nius, ac­cord­ing to the scribes at the time, fit to be placed among the finest ever played in a first class match in the West In­dies. On Jan­u­ary 20 and 21 at our own Queen's Park Oval, he scored an in­cred­i­ble 180 out of T&T's team to­tal of 257 all out ver­sus Ja­maica in a re­gion­al game. The next high­est score was 23 (ex­tras), with his score ac­count­ing for 70 per cent of the to­tal. No­tably, the Ja­maican squad in­clud­ed Court­ney Walsh, Franklyn Rose and Robert Haynes. It was the first of Lara's three cen­turies on his way to re­cap­tur­ing the lead­ing re­gion­al scor­er ti­tle in one sea­son with a tal­ly of 715 runs.

He was again her­ald­ed in TIME, af­ter his epic June in­nings of 501 not out (62 fours, ten six­es!), in his first sea­son of coun­ty crick­et for War­wick­shire against Durham at Edg­bas­ton, the on­ly quin­tu­ple hun­dred in first-class crick­et his­to­ry. It was his sev­enth cen­tu­ry in eight first class knocks, be­com­ing the first bats­man to do so, break­ing a bunch of oth­er records too many to list here. First in the string was the record 375 against Eng­land, and the last the record 501 not out against Durham. His in­cred­i­ble ap­petite for runs con­tin­ued on June 23rd, when he scored his eighth cen­tu­ry (197 in 193 balls) for War­wick­shire ver­sus Northamp­ton­shire, with Curt­ly Am­brose, equalling Don Brad­man's eight cen­turies in 11 first-class in­nings, achieved way back in 1938-'39.

Then Pres­i­dent of T&T, Noor Has­sanali, pre­sent­ed him with the Trin­i­ty Cross, the na­tion's high­est ho­n­our, and The Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade in Port-of-Spain was named in his ho­n­our. He was award­ed the Wis­den "Lead­ing Crick­eter in the World" ho­n­our for 1994, as well as the pres­ti­gious BBC "Over­seas Sports Per­son­al­i­ty of the Year" award. To end the phe­nom­e­nal year that was 1994, Lara played in a Don Brad­man Foun­da­tion char­i­ty match in Syd­ney against a Brad­man XI team that in­clud­ed Zoe Goss, a lead­ing Aussie la­dy crick­eter. TIME mag­a­zine (Jan­u­ary 9, 1995) fea­tures her for hav­ing cap­tured the prized wick­et of the great Bri­an Lara, caught be­hind. Morals: What a great lev­eller this game of crick­et is, and, nev­er un­der­es­ti­mate the pow­er of a woman! His tal­ly of 1,513 runs (av­er­age 89.0) for 1994 sur­passed Lawrence Rowe's 1974 record of 1,117 for the high­est first-class to­tal in a re­gion­al do­mes­tic sea­son.

He be­came then and re­mains 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. A cham­pi­on race­horse, "Lash Dem Lara," was named in his ho­n­our. Spon­sor­ships, en­dorse­ments, ad­ver­tise­ments, as well as gifts of land/prop­er­ty, air­line trav­el and oth­er ma­te­r­i­al items had made him pro­fes­sion­al crick­et's first mil­lion­aire. One can on­ly imag­ine what clas­sic pieces the likes of CLR James and Neville Car­dus would have penned about Bri­an Charles Lara's phe­nom­e­nal 1994 ex­ploits.

More In­fo

�2 Test de­but Pak­istan v West In­dies at La­hore, Dec 6-11, 1990

�2 Last Test Pak­istan v West In­dies at Karachi, Nov 27-Dec 1, 2006

�2 ODI de­but Pak­istan v West In­dies at Karachi, Nov 9, 1990

�2 Last ODI West In­dies v Eng­land at Bridgetown, Apr 21, 2007