Just not cricket, Mr Lara

Brian Lara is the world’s greatest batsman. We take such pride in his achievement that we have awarded him the nation’s highest honour, the Trinity Cross. We made it possible for him to have a palace of a home in prime real estate. We named the city’s main boulevard after him and refer to him as the Prince of Port-of-Spain, so great is our appreciation of his skill and talent as a world class cricketer. We even made him captain of the West Indies team which is as high as you can get in our recognition of sporting prowess. Outstanding sportsmen like Lara also benefit largely from endorsements allowing their great names to be associated with sporting gear, shoes, even underwear, so there are few who would deny Mr Lara the right to support any newspaper of his choice and to be paid a hefty sum of money by them in exchange for such association and use of his great name.

The problem is with Mr Lara’s publicly stated intention to come out his crease and write reports for the newspaper from South Africa and Zimbabwe. Am I missing something here? Is Mr Lara not going to South Africa and Zimbabwe to captain the West Indies team on the tour? How then can he write a report about any of those matches for publication in a newspaper? Is there not something intrinsically inappropriate (to use the mildest possible word) about the captain of a team writing a newspaper report on his game and or that of his players? Is this not reviewing one’s performance oneself? Does Brian Lara’s greatness permit him to do anything he wants no matter how unethical.  What would we say if poet laureate Derek Walcott submitted to a newspaper a review written by him of his opus magnum “Omeros”? Would the fact that he is a Nobel Prize winner give him the right to do so? I don’t think so and something tells me that Mr Walcott would never ever do such a thing.

What would we say if artist Boscoe Holder wrote a review about his latest exhibition, or Greta Taylor did the same about the Marionettes Christmas concert of which she is the conductor? We would be appalled, astonished to say the least. In fact we would find it totally unethical. To write a report for a newspaper on the performance of a cricket team of which one is the captain is stretching credibility to its utter limit. I think it is wrong for Brian Lara to be writing a report for any newspaper on a game in which he is playing, much less a team of which he is captain. Even if he was the most objective man on the surface of the earth or on the fringes of outer space, one would still question his opinion. He has every right to make comments to reporters about his game and players and why West Indies won, lost or drew a match, but filing daily reports of a day’s play in which he is such a key player and so personally involved is a totally different matter. He should think about what such a decision says about his judgment.

jstarr@newsday.co.tt