#BRIAN LARA CRICKET GROUND SERIES#

The sheer statistical weight of his 13 flawless hours and the unimaginable 400 runs speak for themselves. Lara has now ensured that the most celebrated West Indian of the present generation is again on top of the world and is likely to be there for some time.ДЄs he did five years ago, Lara once more transformed a situation of deep personal, and team, crisis into one of critical revival and triumph.

Soon there would be even less to hold on to. Then Lara's highest Test score was trumped by Matthew Hayden's 380 in Perth last October while Shane Warne and Muttiah Muralitharan closed in on Walsh's mark. In all the depression that has enveloped West Indies cricket, even before England arrived with their hordes of fans, there was the pride engendered by the status of Lara's 375 on the same ground five years earlier and Courtney Walsh's 519 wickets as Test cricket's two greatest personal achievements. References to the glory days under Richards and Clive Lloyd had helped sustain the enthusiasm against the indignity of 47 and 94 all out and the defeat in the first three Tests. An exhibition of memorabilia was opened at the St. In Antigua, the Sir Vivian Richards Foundation was launched. England played at the Three Ws Oval.Д«rian Lara is congratulated by Andrew Flintoff after achieving 400 runs. A bust of Malcolm Marshall was unveiled at his old school. In Barbados, the 50th anniversary of Sir Garry Sobers' Test debut was celebrated during the third Test.

#BRIAN LARA CRICKET GROUND SERIES#

Things have taken such a turn for the worse in recent times, but more especially in the series against England, that the passionate fans have turned to nostalgia for solace. The hastily scribbled sign on the popular side that stated 'our wounds have been healed' was stretching the point if it was suggesting that one innings, even as monumental as Lara's, had suddenly put right all the problems that bedevil West Indies cricket. The euphoria throughout the small, cricket-playing countries scattered across the Caribbean Sea and as far as Guyana on the South American mainland was swiftly confirmed in congratulatory messages from the great and the humble, from Presidents and Prime Ministers to the public. He was so composed, so utterly in command, so invincible that he surely could have carried on to 500 and, for that matter, 600 if he was so minded.

Over in the open section, adjoining Independence Street, the national flags of the several independent nations that somehow manage to find unity through their cricket team waved happily as Lara inevitably reclaimed the Test record score just where he had established it 10 years earlier before advancing to his scarcely comprehensible 400. The elevating effect of Brian Lara's remarkable, unbeaten 400 could be witnessed all around the Antigua Recreation Ground the moment it was raised by the left-hander's delicate sweep for a single.ДЇor the first time in the series, West Indian faces were wreathed in smiles, their voices no longer drowned out by the deafening, triumphal chants of the Barmy Army and their travelling accomplices.

Brian lara cricket ground