Pri­or Be­har­ry

In a spe­cial cer­e­mo­ny yes­ter­day, for­mer West In­dies bat­ting star Bri­an Lara was pre­sent­ed with an hon­orary award by the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment. Aus­tralian Prime Min­is­ter Kevin Rudd, in this coun­try for the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing, pinned the medal on Lara's jack­et. The cer­e­mo­ny took place at the of­fi­cial res­i­dence of Aus­tralian High Com­mis­sion­er Philip Ken­twell, in Cas­cade, Port-of-Spain. Lara is now an Hon­orary Mem­ber in the Gen­er­al Di­vi­sion of the Or­der of Aus­tralia. Rudd said Aus­tralia and the Caribbean shared a long his­to­ry, and that Lara con­tin­ued to play a role in crick­et as men­tor. He not­ed the maid­en cen­tu­ry by Adri­an Barath in the first Test against Aus­tralia in Bris­bane.

He said Lara spot­ted Barath at age 11 and had played a role in his de­vel­op­ment. Lara fre­quent­ly vis­it­ed his home state of Queens­land and the Cen­tre for Ex­cel­lence at the Crick­et Uni­ver­si­ty. He said Lara was a hero to many Aus­tralians, just as his name, along with oth­er West In­di­ans, such as Vi­vian Richards, Clive Lloyd and Joel Gar­ner, were well known as Aus­tralians Sir Don Brad­man, Den­nis Lillee and Rod­ney Marsh. Rudd made every­one laugh when out­lin­ing Lara's many records, in­clud­ing his still stand­ing high­est first-class in­nings of 501 not out: "That is con­sid­er­ably in ex­cess of my per­son­al best of 11 not out."

In ac­cept­ing the award, Lara re­vealed how he got the nick­name Prince of Port-of- Spain. He said back in 1990, when the Aus­tralians came to the West In­dies, he was 12th man, and not re­al­ly in­volved in play­ing in the se­ries. So, too, were Aus­tralian play­ers Greg Matthews and Mike Whit­ney. "And I showed them the nightlife in Port-of-Spain. And that is how I got the name Prince of Port-of-Spain. "To­day, I know my two friends in Aus­tralia will be very proud, along with Shane Warne, Michael Clarke...and all my friends and fam­i­ly in Aus­tralia."

He said he had every rea­son to love Aus­tralia, since he scored his first Test hun­dred (277) at Syd­ney. Lara said he fought with Syd­ney's moth­er Leasel Rovedas a bit be­fore she gave in to her daugh­ter's name. He said he had fierce com­pe­ti­tion with the Aus­tralian team. He quipped, "Yes, I love Eng­lish bowl­ing; we know that," no doubt re­fer­ring to the two oc­ca­sions he broke the world record for the high­est Test in­nings against Eng­land. "The com­pe­ti­tion of­fered by Aus­tralia through­out my ca­reer was tremen­dous, and some­thing I looked for­ward to."