Thursday, June 14, 2007

Unfinished business

With Brian Lara’s statements about intending to come back to international cricket, we are likely to be bombarded with opinions from all quarters on whether Lara’s comeback plans are sensible or not, and I would like to venture that most experts would veer towards the latter. Anyway, let me leave that debate and judgment to the experts and dwell on the possible reason for Lara’s apparent volte-face.

“It’s all very well for you to say goodbye to your profession and come back home. But what about the mortgage payments for all those houses we’ve bought? Who’s going to pay for them?” barked the wife when Lara entered home, with his clothes covered in confetti, after yet another triumphant World Cup campaign (they actually won a few games). So he floated his résumé into the market.

Coach? “Wanna coach an Asian nation?”

Write an autobiography? “Sorry, no ghost-writers around – they’ve started writing under their own names. Moreover, autobios are not hot any more, especially after the recent spate of flops.”

Commentator? “No thank you, how can we think of another West Indian when Holding rules the mike?”

“Oh well, you can always go back to the West Indies team.” “Yes, honey.”

So when he said, “I think I am going to play cricket again. If I go six or eight months without cricket I would lose it and I don’t want to lose it yet” to the media, you know what he meant with the “it”.

On a more factual note, Lara probably missed out on a couple of calculations and landmarks. He currently has 11,953 test runs. May be he just wants to cross the 12,000 barrier. He also needs just the one more one-dayer to complete 300 limited overs internationals. Of course numbers don’t matter to Lara, but if they come in, they are good, aren’t they? After all, the 400 not out just happened by the way, didn’t it?

And yes, while Lara has four wickets in ODIs, he is yet to open that account in test matches. So that’s a small matter to address there as well.

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