Brian Lara may hold the record for the highest individual score in both Test and First Class cricket, but the legendary West Indian left-hander does not rate either of those innings as his best.
The year is 1999 and the West Indies have just returned home from South Africa, where they have been beaten 5-0 in the Test series.
Their opponents are the soon to be legendary Australian team, led by Steve Waugh.
They are already down 1-0 in the series, after an embarrassing loss in the first Test at Port of Spain, where they were bowled out for 51 in the second innings.
The pressure is on skipper Brian Lara in the second test in Kingston, Jamaica, as he walks out to bat with the West Indies struggling at 2/5.
Lara is greeted by a hostile reception and a round of boos from the Jamaican crowd, having recently replaced their favourite son, Courtney Walsh as captain.
One more poor innings or one more loss and he is certain it will be over for him as captain.
Lara went on to make 213 in Kingston, followed by 153 not out in the third Test in Bridgetown, giving the West Indies a 2-1 lead in the Frank Worrell Trophy.
You may not find either of these innings in any record books, but in the context of the situation, Lara rates them as the best in his career.
The tale of his greatest innings is the anecdote that stands out the most when Lara addressed the audience as guest speaker at the Parramatta District Cricket Club Sporting Legends Luncheon.
I was fortunate enough to get on the guest list for the event, hoping I might be able to corner the legend and get a few minutes for an interview at the end of it.
As lunch ended, Lara was mobbed as half the people in the room swarmed in for photos and autographs. If the chance was going to come, clearly I was going to have to wait.
Finally, as the crowd died down, the chance was there and I went in, shook his hand and started firing away with questions.
My mind was racing and I wondered how much time I would have, how many questions I could ask before being cut off by an autograph seeker, or tapped on the shoulder by his minder/bodyguard type guy, and told time was up.
I started at the beginning; asking him about the early days in Trinidad, watching the legendary West Indian teams of the 70s and 80s.
Lara grew up in a family with 10 kids, almost enough to have their own cricket team, and not surprisingly, they all loved the game.
‘‘Everyone of us loved cricket,’’ he said.
‘‘Back in those days, there wasn’t much cricket on television, you had to pick up the radio.
‘‘The time difference between Australia and the West Indies is something like 15 hours, so 8pm for us is when cricket started.’’
In cricket, the world knows the West Indies as a unified country, but as Lara would later find out, there was not always harmony between the players from the many different islands of the Caribbean.
But at the time, Lara took no preference.
‘‘My first hero was Roy Fredericks, he’s Guyanese, so I didn’t have an insular bone in my body, I just loved watching cricket.
‘‘In the 80s, I loved watching when Allan Border used to take on the West Indies. He was one of the only Australian batsmen to really stand up and I felt a really great respect for him, so there was no preference at all.’’
As he got older, Lara grew to appreciate players for what they brought to the game. Desmond Haynes had resilience, Gordon Greenidge had the technique and Viv Richards had the aggressive nature and entertained in the way he played the game.
‘‘I put my bag down, walked out and when I came back in, I saw that it had been tossed out on the lawn. ‘‘Where I sat for Trinidad, was where Viv Richards sat for the West Indies.’’
- Brian Lara
While there is no doubt cricket was a huge part of his childhood, it was not the only sport keeping him busy.
He played a lot of football, alongside his best friend Dwight Yorke, who was also a keen cricketer at the time.
‘‘He was better than me at football... and he thought he was better than me at cricket,’’ Lara said.
‘‘He was a decent cricketer, he was a wicketkeeper batsman and he’d boast about the time he got my out caught behind.
‘‘But he loves the game and when you talk cricket with him today, he’s still very passionate.
‘‘But In the end, I think we both chose the right sport.’’
It wasn’t just football Lara was interested in either, he played table tennis and even represented his country in it, but there was little doubt cricket was the sport where he was progressing the most.
As a teenager, Lara went on a school tour to India, where he enjoyed the friendships and the team environment.
While it gave him a taste of life on tour, he was largely unprepared for what awaited him when he came into the West Indies team in 1990.
It was a fragmented environment. Many would not socialise with players from other islands and Lara would find himself hanging around his Trinidad and Tobago team mates like Phil Simmons and Gus Logie.
Lara made his test debut against Pakistan in Lahore in 1990, but had to wait some time to play his next test, watching on as 12th man when Australia toured the West Indies in 1991.
The great Viv Richards was the West Indian captain at the time and Lara quickly got an idea of what he was like.
The first time Lara was part of a West Indies team at his home ground Port of Spain, he walked in and put his kit bag down in its usual spot in the dressing room.
‘‘I put my bag down, walked out and when I came back in, I saw that it had been tossed out on the lawn. ‘‘Where I sat for Trinidad, was where Viv Richards sat for the West Indies.’’
Lara bided his time on the fringes of the West Indies team, before locking down a regular spot during the 1992/93 tour of Australia.
The New Years Test in Sydney was the third in the series and it was in this match that Lara produced the first of many memorable innings of his career.
The Australian bowlers could only watch on as Lara smashed his way to 277, only being dismissed when he accidentally ran himself out.
It was Lara’s first Test century and Sydney and the SCG has been a special place for him ever since, he even named his first daughter after the city.
Many, including Lara have often joked that it is lucky he didn’t make his first century on his Test debut in Lahore.
At the time, there was no way he could have ever imagined making such a big score.
‘‘I wasn’t known back in those youthful days for big scores, I think that just developed,’’ he said.
‘‘Something significant happened during that match, where I got to about 115 or 116 and there was a rain break.
‘‘Everyone came around and congratulated me on my first hundred. My coach at the time, Rohan Kanhai said you’re next innings begins at zero, so I embraced that immediately.
‘‘I understood what he meant; try to get as many runs as possible now, you never know when it’s going to run out.’’
From that moment, Lara said he felt he had the desire to go on and make big scores and some of the biggest were soon to follow.
In April 1994, in the fifth Test against England in Antigua, Lara broke the record for highest individual score, with 375.
He surpassed the previous record held by fellow West Indian, Sir Garfield Sobers.
In the space of two months, he had set the first class record when he made 501 not out in and English county match for Warwickshire, surpassing the previous record of 499 (unlucky, he got run out as well) by Hanif Mohammed of Pakistan.
‘‘The bane of my existence was having those two records and the expectations from a lot of people."
- Brian Lara
The first class record still stands today, but for a few months in 2003/04, Lara did lose his Test record, when Aussie opener Matthew Hayden scored 380 against Zimbabwe.
As fate would have it, at the same ground, against the same opponent and almost exactly 10 years after his 375, Lara made 400 not out to recapture his record, which of course, still stands.
When asked if Hayden’s innings had given him the motivation to get his record back, Lara disagreed, saying the record was more of a burden than anything.
‘‘That 10-year period was really tough,’’ he said.
‘‘The bane of my existence was having those two records and the expectations from a lot of people.
‘‘I felt that I wanted to be a good captain and a lot of things were holding me back. So when that happened, I was like ‘okay cool I can concentrate on being a good captain and people are not going to be hitting me on the back of my head with this.’
‘‘But as destiny would have, we got England, at Antigua again and you can’t fault destiny.’’
Will the records ever broken? Lara conceded beating 501 may be difficult, but would love to see a new holder of both records.
‘‘Records were made to be broken,’’ he said.
‘‘A guy scored 499, (at the time) people would have said, 'who's going to get that'?
‘‘I don’t know if they will be broken, but it would be nice for cricket if someone else can get to those heights once more.
‘‘You don’t want to be sitting on the record for 40, 50 or 60 years, you want to see some youngster come out and go after it and achieve it.’’
At this point we have so many interesting topics, yet there are still so many more things I want to quiz him on. But sensing my time was running out, I asked him who were the best cricketers he played against.
Lara nominated former Pakistan captain Wasim Akram as the best fast bowler, while our very own Shane Warne was the best spinner.
Curtley Ambrose was the best bowler he ever played with, the late Malcolm Marshall a close second.
As for batsmen, it was hard to go past Sir Vivian Richards, but in the end he went with ‘The Little Master’ Sachin Tendulkar.
Finally, we all know about his exploits with the bat, but did Lara ever rate himself as a bowler?
Not really.
He did bowl a bit of leg spin and has four wickets to his name in one day internationals, at an average of just 15.
But while he occasionally liked to tell himself he was a decent bowler, deep down he was always a batsman, and a pretty good one too.
While I probably could have stood there for an hour asking questions, we had to stop it there, and maybe that’s a good thing.
If it had gone on for much longer, I could have written a book about it.