If West Indies great Brian Lara were to play in the modern era, would he use the reverse-sweep, which England opener Ben Duckett has mastered, as one of his main strokes in Test cricket? Has he ever attempted one of those ostentatious swipes across the line when he was playing?
Lara never needed to think that way, according to the West Indies great, who holds the record for hitting the highest number of runs in a Test inning. An underappreciated feature of the Trinidadian's batting has been his quick scoring rates throughout his career, along with his thirst for the big daddy centuries. He finished with 11,953 runs, averaging 52.88 in 131 Test matches with 34 tons.
Lara's 60.51 strike rate is higher than that of any of the 19 batters who have scored 9,000 Test runs, the most recent of whom was former India captain Virat Kohli. When asked by Michael Vaughan, the former captain of England, that if he would have used the sweeps if he had batted today, Lara responded he never required them.
“I have a little boy in Australia who wants to play and that’s all what he wants to do..smack the ball and do all the fancy stuff. First of all, I am happy in the period that I played in. Played a lot of Tests. Everybody would like to be in the T20s (now) with all the funds involved,” said Lara in a chat on the Stick to Cricket podcast.
Lara stuck closer to the conventional flow of the longest format and compared his shot-making to that of Kohli rather than Duckett. “At the end of the day, I think I had enough shots to survive. And I look at guys like Virat Kohli, they don’t do much of that (reverse sweeps). So I think I would have been one of the players who would have, instead of playing a reverse sweep down to third man, would have hit them over extra cover,” remarked Lara.
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Reflecting on his world-record 400*, which recently came under threat when South Africa’s stand-in captain Wiaan Mulder retired on 367 against Zimbabwe (partly as a tribute to him), Lara recalled that during the 2004 Antigua Test, it felt like the England bowlers weren’t too keen on bowling to him. At the very venue where he had broken Garry Sobers’ record of 365 with his 375 against the same opposition in 1994, Lara said that chasing the 400 mark wasn’t on his mind during the 2004 Test. His primary focus, he recalled, was helping West Indies avoid a 3-0 series whitewash at home against England.
“When I got to 100, I realised that (Steve) Harmison, who was the most dangerous, didn’t want to bowl much. If you look at the stats, he was the only one who didn’t go for 100, he came off at 92,” Lara said while reflecting on the iconic knock that restored his place at the top of the Test batting charts — a record he reclaimed after Australia opener Matthew Hayden had briefly held it with his 380 against Zimbabwe in 2003.
“You really think I was thinking about getting to towards 400? No chance! I get 100, you get a double, I look at the bowling attack and you can tell the guys don’t really want to turn up,” he added.
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