Lara touches Bradman

[FaltuRidwanBhai]

wonderful performance once again by brian charles lara. surely he is one of the best batsman in test cricket without any doubt. he is just too good. i think his innings will atleast give some relief to the west indies cricket board after loosing by 3-0 in the series already.

[Arnab]

Apparently he scored at an amazing rate during his 501* first class record as well: "In all Lara faced only 427 balls, and hammered 62 fours and ten sixes. On the final day he whacked 174 runs before lunch."

I just found out.

[James90]

Bradman hit 309 runs in a day against England

[James90]

Originally posted by fab
Damn the time difference I missed it... Well done Lara, he deserves the honour

(now let's hope all the hype and his gf gets to his head so he loses his form again. SOON.)

My internet was on and off all night! It started listening to Radio Guyana but after a couple of overs it was well behind cricinfo so i refreshed...by then sooo many ppl had tuned in wanting to hear the record so i couldn't get back on. Then it just got worse. I got disconnected for an hour. When i came back Lara was only on 350. It disconnected many times for the next 30 mins. One ball Lara's on 374 and i hear my connection go again. I try and try once more to get it working and by the time it does i see Lara's on 384!

[Arnab]

Originally posted by Habibul_fan
Bradman hit 309 runs in a day against England

That got me curious about Lara's 501. How many runs did he score on the last day?

111* Resumes innings on the final day

501* Boundary off J.E.Morris sees new first-class individual record score.

That's a whopping 390 runs scored in a day.

He also scored a 140 in the first innings.

That means 641 runs in two innings.

With that score, he simultaneously broke 27 county and first class records in one innings.

http://www.ecb.co.uk/link_to_databas...994_STATS.html


[Edited on 14-4-2004 by Arnab]

[James90]

He must be considered as an all-time great now, if he can find more consistancy in the next few years before he retired then he would be considered possibly alongside Sobers

[Zunaid]

Highest individual scores in Test career:
400* BC Lara WI v Eng St John's 2003-04
380 ML Hayden Aus v Zim Perth 2003-04
375 BC Lara WI v Eng St John's 1993-94
Highest SECOND highest individual scores in Test career:
375 BC Lara WI v Eng St John's 1993-94
304 DG Bradman Aus v Eng Leeds 1930 (334)
271 Javed Miandad Pak v NZ Auckland 1988-89 (280*)

Highest THIRD highest individual scores in Test career:
299* DG Bradman Aus v SAf Adelaide 1931-32
277 BC Lara WI v Aus Sydney 1992-93
260 Javed Miandad Pak v Eng The Oval 1987

Highest FOURTH highest individual scores in Test career:
270 DG Bradman Aus v Eng Melbourne 1936-37
231* WR Hammond Eng v Aus Sydney 1936-37 (336*, 251, 240)
221 BC Lara WI v SL Colombo(SSC) 2001-02

Highest FIFTH highest individual scores in Test career:
254 DG Bradman Aus v Eng Lord's 1930
227 WR Hammond Eng v NZ Christchurch 1932-33
213 BC Lara WI v Aus Kingston 1998-99

Highest SIXTH highest individual scores in Test career:
244 DG Bradman Aus v Eng The Oval 1934
217 WR Hammond Eng v Ind The Oval 1936
209 BC Lara WI v SL Gros Islet 2003

Highest SEVENTH highest individual scores in Test career:
234 DG Bradman Aus v Eng Sydney(2) 1946-47
202 BC Lara WI v SAf Johannesburg 2003-04
200 WR Hammond Eng v Aus Melbourne(3) 1928-29

Highest EIGHTH highest individual scores in Test career:
232 DG Bradman Aus v Eng The Oval 1930
191 BC Lara WI v Zim Bulawayo 2003-04
181 WR Hammond Eng v SAf Cape Town 1938-39

Highest NINTH highest individual scores in Test career:
226 DG Bradman Aus v SAf Brisbane 1931-32
182 BC Lara WI v Aus Adelaide 2000-01
177 WR Hammond Eng v Aus Adelaide 1928-29

Highest TENTH highest individual scores in Test career:
223 DG Bradman Aus v WI Brisbane 1930-31
179 BC Lara WI v Eng The Oval 1995
176 SR Tendulkar Ind v Zim Nagpur 2001-02 v WI Calcutta 2002-03


[Edited on 14-4-2004 by Zunaid]

[Tintin]

Bradman hit 309 runs in a day against England

But Bradman took 410 balls to complete his triple, and 446 balls for 334. Slightly slower than Lara

[Ahmed_B]

Originally posted by chinaman
Long hours of fielding taking it's toll too. Too bad, the WIs are finding their footings just before our matches!

ya chinaman vai, somehow all the bigger teams managing to come back to full form before or during any series with Bangladesh!!
is it good for us or bad? .. cant figure out really.. but it sure is tough!

[Arnab]

Found some more interesting stats about most runs scored in a day. Here are the three recent top ten entries:

228 (0-228) H H Gibbs (228) SA v Pak Newlands, Cape Town 2002-03
228 (0-228*) V Sehwag (228*) Ind v Pak Multan 2003-04
227 (86*-313*) B C Lara (400*) WI v Eng St John's, Antigua 2003-04

*****
Apparently, Lara scores his runs as quick as Sehwag or Gibbs. Not bad for a 34 year old.

[Arnab]

Ian Fletcher recalls how Lara toyed with Mushtaq Ahmed:

I first met Lara in 1994, a month after his 375 against England, when I was
playing for Somerset.

Warwickshire, in a blaze of publicity, had signed him for the season, jettisoning Manoj Prabhakar to create a vacancy for the overseas player in the process but enjoying the media and corporate attention that the world record holder brought.

The match was rain-affected and via negotiation and declarations between the captains the match became a one-innings run chase for them on the final day, 321 to win in around 90 overs.

A testing challenge, especially as Mushtaq Ahmed, the Pakistani leg-spinner was our overseas player. Warwickshire won inside 54 overs and Lara scored 136. The Somerset dressing room afterwards was silent, stunned, the unspoken question: "What has just happened?"

The answer was that genius had just happened, Lara had just happened. I stood at silly point, about two yards from him on the off-side as Ahmed tried to bamboozle him with his bag of tricks. Leggies, googlies, sliders and teasers all met with the same result - the full face of Lara?s bat. He kept pushing the ball past me and wide of the cover fielder and saying ?Twosey?. This was not a call to his batting partner Roger Twose but a demand that they run two so he could keep the strike.

"Twosey" again and off he went. Our captain, Andy Hayhurst adjusted the field to stem the runs through that particular gap but next ball, "twosey" said Lara and off he scampered. The fielder that had been moved had to sprint to where he had been to get the ball.

It became cruel. One of the world's best bowlers and a world cup winner was being toyed with, but there was no arrogance from Lara, no gloating, just a relentless accumulation of runs.

If I had not been so close to him I might have had a chance to enjoy it. Instead I spent every other ball jumping out the way.

In frustration Ahmed altered the angle of delivery by going round the wicket and Lara responded with a sequence of sweep shots: some were fine and delicate, on others the back-lift went high as he smashed the ball to a boundary.

Seamers fared even worse. Graham Rose was hit for two massive consecutive sixes, one straight and the next over square leg. Neither had been hit hard, Lara's timing and phenomenal bat-speed generated the power, not his strength. His bat-speed was one of the things that I marvelled at. It refers to the speed of the blade through the hitting zone, about a foot before contact with the ball and a foot after. Lara's bat was a blur. His back-lift is high, up like a periscope and he jumps, hops almost into position, but his bat when he attacks moves like a fencing rapier. A turn or flick of the wrists and the ball shoots through a gap and for runs.

Ahmed got him in the end, bowled with a quicker ball and the crowd applauded him all the way from the field. So did we.

http://sport.scotsman.com/cricket.cfm?id=437482004

[Edited on 18-4-2004 by Arnab]

[Tintin]

Apparently, Lara scores his runs as quick as Sehwag or Gibbs.

Gibbs was out in the 79th over. Sehwag batted for 90 overs. Lara batted for 105 (the first day had been interrupted by rain).

Gibbs faced 240 balls. Sehwag 271. Lara 311.

[chinaman]

The Trinidad prime minister has ordered a day of celebration on Monday to mark Brian Lara's world record Test score of 400 not out.

Lara will attend a gala celebration in his honour in Port of Spain followed by a motorcade ride through the city.

He is also expected to receive the Caricom Honour of Merit, the highest award available to a Trinidadian.

BBC >>

[chinaman]

RICKY Ponting believes Brian Lara's world record Test score was tinged with selfishness.

The Australian captain doubts whether Lara's magnificent 400 not out, made against England at Antigua last week, will ever be beaten because few skippers in world cricket are willing to jeopardise a winning position by allowing one batsman to spend so long at the crease.

Lara's quadruple century – the first in Test history, eclipsing Matthew Hayden's former world mark of 380 – was almost 13 hours in the making.

As captain, Lara could bat for as long as he liked ... and he did. His decision to keep going until after lunch on the third day, as the Windies amassed an unnecessarily healthy 5(dec)-751, left the hosts without enough time to win the Test.

Ponting said Australia's desire to secure victory as quickly as possible would make it difficult for any of the batsmen, himself included, to beat Lara's feat.

"It's hard to imagine an Australian player doing it, just because of the way we play our cricket. It's generally not the way we play," said Ponting.

"I've read some of the reports in the paper over the last couple of days about Lara's innings. Their whole first innings might have been geared around one individual performance and they could have let a Test match slip because of it.

"They ran out of time in the game – that's not the way the Australian team plays."

Hayden's 380 against Zimbabwe in Perth last October took just over ten hours in a match Australia won by an innings and 175 runs early on the fifth day.

Ponting said then captain Steve Waugh's decision to let Hayden keep batting, in an effort to break Lara's previous world record of 375, was the exception to the team rule.

"It was a very rare thing what we did with that Zimbabwean Test match, for Matty to be able to bat for as long as he did and go on and make that big score," said Ponting.

"He was given the opportunity to go on and break Brian's record and he did that. He was going to be given another half an hour, or 20 minutes, to try to get to 400 but unfortunately he got out."

Ponting, Hayden, Lara and India's Sachin Tendulkar are the game's pre-eminent batsmen right now, but the Australian No.3 said he was only vaguely interested in individual records.

"It would be nice if you could be the world record holder but at the end of the day, as we've seen, it doesn't necessarily win you a Test match, which is what we're all about," said Ponting.

"Everyone will be chasing it, there's a record there now I'm sure a lot of batsmen around the world would like to have their name next to. Buut we'll have to wait and see how things pan out over the next few years."

Australia plays two Tests next month against lowly-ranked Zimbabwe which has a team in chaos.

Records, both team and personal, will be up for grabs.

AFP / FoxSports >>

[Arnab]

Haha! Australians can't stand that Lara snatched the batting record back.

Yeah, Lara is "selfish", but when Matthew Hayden was given an extra half hour just to reach 400, that's not selfish, but an "exception of the rule".

What sore losers!

[fab]

Looks like Fox is exaggerating and sensationalising as usual. Exactly WHERE did Ponting explicitly say 'Lara was selfish'?

Having said that, I think Ponting made a stupid analysis/prediction.. If Hayden can be an exception to the rule, given the opportunity, so could someone else.

[reverse_swing]

AP[ WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21, 2004 ]


PORT OF SPAIN (Trinidad): West Indies captain Brian Lara has responded to the comments from his Australian counterpart, Ricky Ponting, about his decision to bat on and reach a Test-record score of 400 against England in the final Test at the Antigua Recreation Ground.

Speaking at a civic reception in his honour here on Tuesday, Lara called Ponting's comments "unfortunate."

"I saw no sense to make it competitive for the English," Lara said. "I saw an opportunity that if we got in excess of seven hundred runs, we would put England under tremendous pressure for the remainder of the match. We would be able to enforce the follow-on, if that was the case, and we knew for sure that we achieved our number one goal, which was to avoid the whitewash in the series."

Lara, who set a world record score of 375 runs in 1994 against England at Antigua, had the record broken October last year by Australian opening batsman Matthew Hayden, who notched an innings of 380 against Zimbabwe at Sydney.



The West Indies skipper hit Test cricket's first ever quadruple century over 13 hours to eclipse Hayden's total last week in West Indies' draw with England.

Ponting had told reporters in Australia on Monday that the fact that Lara batted so long may have cost his team a Test win.

"I've read some of the reports in the paper over the last couple of days about Lara's innings," he said. "Their whole first innings might have been geared around one individual performance and they could have let a Test match slip because of it."

Lara added that Ponting has his reasons for saying what he did and the Australian team can play the way it does because of its current strength.



"I just want to say to Ricky Ponting that he is the leader of a great team, and of course he can afford to have situations like that, when they do present themselves, to take another course. But for the West Indies, I also thought that such an achievement can inspire the young team. We can move on from here and it can inspire our people," he added.



Lara, who missed the first one-day international against England on April 18 with an injured finger on his right hand, hopes to be fit for the second and third one-dayers here on Saturday and Sunday.

-TimesofIndia