Harvard praise for Lara’s achievement

For all the coaches that had a hand in developing the cricket talent of world record holder for the highest individual score in Test cricket, Brian Lara, Monday’s achievement was described as fantastic, wonderful, tremendous and unbeatable. Newsday went to Harvard and spoke with a number of those coaches yesterday as they continued to keep watch on the fourth and final match of the England versus the West Indies Test series. On Lara’s record breaking innings of 400 not out on Monday, Coach Dwight Day, whose father Hugo Day was Lara’s first coach between 1975 and 1979, said it was a fantastic individual achievement but that he was just a little sad that it didn’t happen earlier in the tour.

“However, the fact is that as an individual record, nobody can lay claim to this wonderful achievement. He must be proud of it as a Trinidadian and it feels good knowing that it’s somebody who has been nurtured by the Harvard Clinic. On a personal level, my father was his coach for the first four years of his cricketing foundation from age six to nine. My father, wherever he is now, must be smiling now,” said Day, recalling Lara’s self-assurance, as did all the other Harvard coaches. He said: “He was very self-assured, obviously he had been coached before that, probably by his elder siblings. But what I remember in particular is that he was convinced from a very early stage that he was one day going to play for West Indies without a doubt.”

Coach Indar Ramgoolam, who took over from Day, told Newsday that he saw a bit of fatigue in Lara while watching the innings, but also saw that Lara’s aim was to get that record. Ramgoolam also praised Ridley Jacobs, who he said handled the situation well. “When Ridley got bowled, I saw that Lara looked a bit distressed, saying ‘oh gosh,’ but it was a no-ball and he went down and he talked, but I was uneasy,” said Ramgoolam, who started his own countdown when Lara was 131 runs away from the record. President of the club, Oliver Camps, who also recalled Lara as a self-assured young man, said of the record breaking innings: “What I admired was his patience because he had to go through quite a bit to be able to reach that 400 mark and I believe his patience was most present there and responsible for having him reach it.” Camps added: “I think the entire country must be proud of what he achieved but we at the Harvard Club are extra proud because of the fact that he learnt all the basic things about cricket during his years at the club. Hats off to all his coaches.”

Another coach, Gerry Bowen, said Lara was awarded the highest medal of the clinic at age 12 and from then they could have seen that he was a player of quality. He said Lara always displayed leadership qualities and then recalled at a past Good Friday match in the presence of Junior Culture Minister Eddie Hart and Lara’s father Bunty, where the latter wasn’t happy with the matting wicket and so decided to pull his son out. Eventually, though, Bunty allowed the game to go on, sat down and watched his son score 78. With that, everybody thought, that is a West Indies player. Lara toured with the Harvard team in 1983 to Barbados and although he didn’t score the most runs on tour, people like Carlisle Best saw him and gave him a bat stating back then that Lara was a player for the future.

On his performance on Monday, Bowen said: “That 400, I really didn’t look for him after his 375 but at the beginning of the year and after the day’s play on Sunday, you could have seen the committment. There wasn’t the flashing outside the off stump,  there wasn’t the excited Lara. It was a cool headed Lara and that innings was tremendous. I don’t think anybody would break that record.” Arnold Soodeen, yet another of Lara’s coaches told Newsday: “I think that 400 runs was something out of this world. I don’t think anybody could surpass that. Congratulations to Brian. I think his Net I coach Leonard Kirton would have been extra proud of him, because Lara was not always an easy player since he was so self assured and often thought he could do no wrong. Kirton was the one who curbed that sort of exuberance in Lara and instilled control in him.”