It's back to Lara

WITH the failure of Carl Hooper in the recently concluded World Cup tournament and the need to replace him as West Indies captain, it seems the selectors had little or no choice but to confer the mantle of leadership once again on Brian Lara who captained the Windies from January 1998 to the end of 2000. The question the selectors faced, following our early departure from the World Cup and in face of the impending Aussie challenge, was the difficult one of "who we go put?" Of the three "possible" candidates, Lara, Chanderpaul and Jacobs — the three most experienced players bar Hooper — common sense dictated that the TT batting star be considered the only viable choice.

Apart from his credentials, the fact that he led the side for three years and the influence he would have as the world record holder in both Test and first class cricket, Lara's selection becomes imperative also from the investment the WICB has been making in young talent in its effort to rebuild a world-class Test team. In this context, Lara's stature and the role he must continue to play in advising and inspiring his younger team-mates, makes him virtually the only pick for the captaincy.

However, in spite of its inevitability and the loud cheers which greeted the announcement at Kensington, Lara's return to the Windies leadership will hardly be greeted with whole-hearted enthusiasm by WI cricket fans many of whom worry about his inconsistency and his personal commitment to Windies cricket.

In this sense, the selectors have committed an act of faith which we can only hope Lara will now proceed to justify. We too have little choice but to wait and see, since, in spite of his class, Lara has disappointed us so many times before. In accepting the captaincy anew, the Windies batting star said he had "two years of introspection, two years of looking and seeing where I've gone wrong." In retrospect, he feels that relinquishing the captaincy was "a good decision at the time".

Also in Lara's favour as he assumes the leadership again is the absence of tension and controversy, the kind of animosity generated among some fans who believed that Courteney Walsh should have been appointed captain instead and the dislike which Lara is reported to have felt from a member of the Board.

The circumstances, then, are different and we sincerely hope that the ensuing story will also be different. To brighten that hope, Lara says: "A lot of things I did two years ago, I don't think I'll be doing now." Back at the helm, Lara seems filled with the best of intentions and cricket fans in the region will have to take him at his word, that his approach to leading the team will now be different, not only to the conduct of his previous tenure but also to the style of his immediate predecessors, Adams and Hooper.

Although chief selector Vivian Richards does not view Lara's new mandate as a long-term one, precisely how long he will remain as Windies skipper seems up to Lara himself and the success he makes of the job, particularly in leading a young WI team against the powerful Australians this month and the Sri Lankans later in the year. In any case, it may take some time before vice captain Sarwan is mature enough to take over.

But if the selectors appear to have solved the problem of replacing Hooper as Windies captain, they still have the dilemma presented by our openers to deal with. One of the major reasons for our failure in the World Cup was the consistent inability of Hinds and Gayle to provide a respectable foundation on which to build a match-winning score. Should we persist with them, or look to blood another pair?