On this day in 1988 – Brian Lara makes his first-class debut
January 22nd 1988 is a very important day in the cricketing world. It was on this day that a willow wielding batting genius strode out to bat for the first time in a first-class match. At the age of just 18, Brian Charles Lara made his debut for the Trinidad and Tobago side. The left-handed batting icon scored only 14 in his debut first-class innings, and perished off the bowling of Elquemelo Willett.
In the second match, Lara scored 92 for his side, against Barbados, whose bowling line up consisted of the fiery Joel Garner and the deadly Malcolm Marshall. To put things into further perspective, no other batsman from his side even got to a half-century when Lara blazed his way to 92. And from there on, Lara would go on to rule the cricketing world for close to two decades.
A Test debut followed in the year 1990, against Pakistan. Lara was impressive against a Pakistan bowling attack consisting of Abdul Qadir, Imran Khan and Wasim Akram, and stroked a fluent 44. And then, came that moment, four years later, in the year 1994 where the world got a full view of what Lara is capable of. Against England, at Antigua, Lara scored a record-breaking 375, absolutely destroying the likes of Andy Caddick, Angus Fraser and Chris Lewis.
Almost 10 years later, he would go on to achieve a feat that no mortal man has managed to replicate till date. Lara breached the 400-run mark in the year 2004 and once again, the opposition was England. And, through the course of his epic career that lasted a decade and a half, Lara ripped apart bowling attacks and will go down as the finest batsman of his era, alongside batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar.
Lara bid adieu to the sport in the year 2007, after scaling peaks that no West Indian batsman has scaled since his departure. He scored a whopping 11953 runs in the whites for his country, including 34 hundreds which consist of 9 double hundreds, 2 triple hundreds and a quadruple hundred. Even in the coloured clothing, Lara scored 10405 runs, including 19 hundreds and 63 fifties.
Lara put on the West Indian jersey for the last time in the year 2007. And since then, the cricketing world has not seen a man of his class. For he was the calypso prince, whose splendour set him apart from the rest.
