The rebirth of cool

Through his adult life, he has had to grapple with the fame, fortune and flattery his phenomenal feats have brought him. Brian Lara, who has scaled run-scoring heights like none before or since was once so overwhelmed by stardom that he announced his retirement to startled team-mates on a tour of England in 1995.

He had his run-ins with authority - so often the bane of sportsmen touched by genius - and, as a typically fun-loving Trinidadian, he frequently seemed keener on merry-making than on making runs. He quit the West Indies captaincy in February 2000 after two years of what he termed "moderate success and devastating failure" and took time off to see a psychiatrist. No sooner had he returned than he strained an under-utilised hamstring muscle that has bothered him ever since.

As the runs that once flowed from his bat in a torrent were reduced to the occasional flash flood, Lara's Test average nosedived to 47 from the high 60s of the heady days of 1994 when he, in the space of six weeks, fashioned both his Test-record 375 against England in Antigua and the new first-class standard of 501 not out in an English county match.

This was the backdrop for Lara's re-entry into international cricket in Sri Lanka in November. Even the wildest optimist wouldn't have imagined what followed.

In the three Tests, Lara reeled off scores of 178, 40, 74, 45, 221 and 130. His 688 runs, at an average of 114.6 were second only to Graham Gooch's 752 (average 125.33) against India in 1992-93. But while Gooch was a clinical accumulator, appreciably more substance than style, Lara is a dazzling artist whose inventive brain, twinkling feet, keen eye and strong wrists combine for a wide variety of breathtaking strokes. Except for the hook - for there was little to hook - there was not one he did not play, with a flourish of his blade mostly through an arc of 180 degrees from backlift to follow-through.

His duels with Muttiah Muralitharan were the stuff of which sporting legends are made. The little Sri Lankan with the flashing eyes and contortionist's action bemused Lara's harried team-mates with his vicious off-breaks, dipping flight and straight balls. Only Lara had the wherewithal to devise a strategy to counter him.

By the last Test, as he became the sixth batsman in the game's long history to pass 200 and 100 in each innings of a Test, the sublime left-hander was doing much as he pleased and Muralitharan was confined to three wickets - one a throw-away tailender - against the 21 he tormented out of the West Indians in the earlier Tests.

It wasn't simply the weight of runs that told the story of the second coming of Lara. It was how he invented a way to master Murali who bothered him early in the series. In sport, as in life, the wisest piece of advice is to listen to the voice of experience, to those who have been there, done that. Given his records, Lara's options are somewhat limited but he has always known whose counsel to heed. Gary Sobers, the greatest player the game has known, a fellow left-hander, kindred spirit and perceptive judge, passed on a simple, but significant, technical hint a few weeks before the tour. Sobers told Lara that he had to stop chopping across the line of the ball and get his hands to come from behind the ball, rather than from gully.

But for all of Lara's brilliance, his team was humiliated comprehensively. "It's very disappointing, of course," he commented. "The reason I set about getting my average up is that I had become inconsistent and the team had suffered because of it. I'd now give up all those 688 runs for the series to start all over again so we could have another chance."