Lara in role of
father figure

Double world record holder and current West Indies cricket captain Brian Lara who celebrated his 34th birthday two Fridays ago is a changed man.

He now looks to the future of the game in the West Indies on an optistic note despite the run of poor results against the touring Australians.

“I think I know exactly what my responsibilities are and see they have given me a 22- year-old vice-captain so its somewhat of an interim job that I want to make a success of. But I see it as an opportunity to take some of the young players.. ...I think the disparity in age at present between a couple of the guys in their thirties and a lot of guys in their early 20s is quite huge and we need to bridge that gap,” Lara said in an interview with I95.5FM.

“Maybe we need to get some of the younger players a lot more experience and a lot more tutorship from someone. I think the board trusts that I am capable of doing this,” he said. The new West Indies captain believes in allowing players an opportunity to express themselves. He feels they have accepted the new management committee established by the West Indies Cricket Board.

“I think it is great. There are a lot of young players on the team first of all and they make up the majority of the team. First of all you must have an open-door policy if young players control your team and they control the majority. So we have this open-door policy,” Lara said.

 “I do not know what it was in the past. I will not comment on that but I think now we understand that it is their game. It is a game for them to take forward and we just have to facilitate them with what is necessary at present so that they mature and so that can carry the baton for a few years to come,” he said.

Lara was reflective on  his previous stint as West Indies captain.

“I mean first of all you know, no excuses made. You know I had my way of leading games. I led all the different groups in Trinidad up to the national team, West Indies Under-23 and even the West Indies ‘B’ team and I had a style of captaincy that was working.

“But captaining a West Indies team on a world stage under that microscope is a different story. Different cultures, different backgrounds, different players to deal with, and of course you are under the scope of the media all the time. So it was something new to me and when I realised after two or three years in charge, I was not fully equipped to deal with such a position,”Lara confessed.

“I think it is one of the highest positions in the Caribbean. Not only in sports in the Caribbean.....but in the Caribbean to be leader and captain of the West Indies cricket team is something what six million people plus six million West Indians away ......look up to and respect and I really did not see myself fulfilling it as I should have at that period.

‘What I have now is a diversity that I have learnt under Jimmy Adams, under Carl Hooper and a bit of introspection. I realise that now I am a better person and I have better capabilities to do the job,” Lara said.

“I.... first of all, in the past I was looking at results, results. Now it is not necessarily results. Now it is more of a father figure. Now it is more of a person who wants to see the young team grow into a team that is maybe not invincible, but maybe a team that can win but also a team that can represent us as ambassadors and that has been lacking in the last ten or 12 years or at least since I have started my international tour,” he remarked.

“That ambassadorial role that we really play in the world for West Indies people and I want to see more of that come about.

I want to see our youngsters being able to go away and really replicate the careers of the guys in the 50s and 60s, the great cricketers, the great West Indies, the three Ws, Sir Garfield and all those guys who were known not just for their cricket but for their way of life,” added Lara.