Let's Stop Operation 'Kill' Lara

01, May 2000
We said the following in early April 1999 after the West Indian cricket team defeated Australia at Kensington: "There are no means of measure available but one feels certain that productivity-wise, Wednesday, the day after that, soon to be famous, Kensington Test match, must have been one of the greatest in our recent history.

"It is all about how cricket, that game of bat and ball and character, serves to energise a people, rekindle all their hopes and dreams and stir their loins to face present and future challenges.

"It is about the masses of people who cannot be anything but honest about their human condition, who recognise that they are not perfect, who as they face all the trails and tribulations of existence take their personal weaknesses and failings as par for the course, and keep their sights on the Olympian mounts, knowing fully well that all that is ever necessary is that they give their best shot and seize the opportunities when they come along. And those who pray, pray, and seek solace and divine guidance as they face the obstacles.

"That is all that has happened with Lara and his team in the period between the South African debacle and the Kensington victory. From pariah to hero, from the brink of utter and total rejection as captain to being now dubbed the great humbler of the world's best cricket team.

"But character is not built in a month. Character is the result of the sum total of a person's history at any given point. Lara's character was moulded in Bunty's and Pearl's house, at Fatima College, at Harvard's cricket school, etc.

If Lara's character is flawed, it means that something must have gone amiss way back in time. The pundits, in their vacuousness, read too much into Lara's exuberance of youth and initial reaction to being cricket's first international 'superstar'..."

Sometimes it seems that the biggest crime that Lara could have possibly committed was to have scored 375 and 501. Simply because we could not identify any real "crimes". And we have asked continuously what indeed has Lara done to deserve such hatred and disparagement?

We have been told that he craved captaincy so much that he under-performed deliberately to undermine both Richardson's and Walsh's captaincies. But no one has yet been able to quote anything that Lara may have spoken or written that would support such assertions. It is all mere assumption.

True to say, Lara has constantly admitted that he might not have always been properly focused on his game and quite so given all the superstar attention and economic considerations which suddenly became a significant part of his everyday life.

What was clear is that he had the intelligence to grasp fully what was affecting his game negatively and what he required then was understanding and support from management as well as probably stringent barricades around the entire team to keep the distractions at the very minimal and so curb some of the natural instincts of youth. Management in other sports usually does so in the USA and Europe to protect their professional charges.

The other side to this question of under-performance lies in the fact that whenever Lara walks to the wicket, he is viewed as the holder of the most significant cricket records, and so the bowler bowls his best balls, the fielders become quite motivated and the opposing captain suddenly makes his best moves. Sixty per cent of the time the umpire is forced by the extra exuberance of appeals to make mistakes.

If we go back and painstakingly look at all the dismissals given to Lara since the 375 and the 501, we will see with the help of slow motion camera work that in many cases Lara was falsely dismissed and in some cases deliberately so. He is still the only player today that walks when he knows he is out in the proper tradition of all the West Indian greats.

On the other hand, Lara, himself, says that it is most hurtful and astonishing for him to hear that he craved captaincy so deeply that he undermined the previous two captains and under-performed to the detriment of West Indian cricket.

That is what gives him sleepless nights and torments him to the point that he may very well be in danger of eventually becoming a manic depressive. Unless we stop this operation called "Kill Lara" right now, once and for good.

Lara says that everything that he has ever done in his entire life since the early days under the guidance of his deceased beloved father, Bunty, has been for West Indian cricket. Are we saying to him now that his entire life to date has meant nothing, has been all a great waste?

The great ones never under-perform. They may misread a particular moment in a game, they may be forced at some point to attempt to seize the bowling by the "scruff of the neck", so to speak, and end up being dismissed cheaply but the great ones never under-perform.

The point is that we in the West Indies have pushed these falsehoods about Lara, and the international press and the strategists of opposing teams have exploited it to the fullest. It is we who feel that we have been taking Lara down a peg or two by asserting that he "is nobody" and that "he is not bigger than the game" and such crap who, in fact, have been doing the greatest disservice to West Indian cricket.

Can we be surprised then when internationally every other batsman except Lara is given accolades? Suddenly everybody else, Tendulkar, Waugh, Inzamam-ul-Haq, etc is rated by bowlers as better than Lara and Lara could not make the Wisden top cricketers of the century. It is all psychological warfare, directed at an unsuspecting West Indies and at this short, black, nobody from Santa Cruz in particular. When will we wake up and smell the coffee?

In the meantime, the rest of the Caribbean islands and the international community shall continue to exploit T&T's great propensity to reduce our heroes, especially our black ones, to mediocrity and nothingness.

The other criticism is that Lara does not socialise with the entire team. He fought tooth and nail for better benefits for all and sundry and put his cricketing future on the line but we are to believe that he does not socialise. We are not talking here about babies but about professional adults in free association.

Those who project this as a failing on Lara's part are the very ones who now say that Jimmy Adams' recent successes as captain can be attributed to his extroverted show of "love" for everyone on the team.

If such kindergarten psychology can explain why suddenly King and Rose and McLean are now bowling good length and line despite all the work Malcolm Marshall did with them in the past and fielders are suddenly throwing their bodies to cover balls, then we may probably forget all the talk about the establishing of a scientific West Indian academy of cricket like the other cricketing nations and place our future hopes on finding "loving" players. These are some of the very bowlers recently dismissed by the New Zealand captain as useless "bounce-bowlers".

Jimmy's good showing of public relations will take us only so far. In the meantime Pearl Lara, not in the best of health, another factor no one has considered, is smiling and happy to have her son at home and out of the immediate firing line.

However, we need a cricket captain who understands the politics and history of West Indian nationhood, who believes and stands for such nationhood in all its integrity, and is prepared to fight anybody, including the board of management, to get all that is necessary technically and otherwise to elevate and bind this sense of nationhood through this glorious game of "bat and ball and character".