The Manicou Report

Brian Lara

I don’t know what it was about Brian Lara over the past few days but the man was just on fire scoring 216 in the West Indies’ first innings of the second Test against Pakistan. We all know that Lara has his ups and downs, but when Lara is on, Lara is on.

The thing is I love to watch Tendulkar bat almost as much as I like to watch Lara and I can easily see why critics are unwilling to say outright which is better. A friend asked me the other day who I would prefer to have on my team if I had one - Lara or Tendulkar? Ouch, talk about a tough question. Despite my WI pride, I might lean towards Tendulkar if I had no idea what kind of form either of them was in, but if I had to choose between an in form Lara and an in form Tendulkar, I’d choose an in from Lara any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Because when Lara is in his zone he is untouchable.

This especially after the mauling he handed down to the Pakistani bowlers over the past few days. I’m not sure if it was that he needed to answer his critics, or if he had that much a desire in him to win that game or if Lara had downed a couple gallons of Haterade, but there must be some reason for an innings of 216 including a 77-ball century (the 9th fastest in Test history) and an extremely brutal 26 from one over off Danish Kaneria.

Danish Kaneria

Kaneria isn’t such a bad bowler himself and in fact for this stage of his career, he’s taken more test wickets (132) than both Shane Warne (125) and Muttiah Muralitharan (107). Interesting also to note, although it’s just trivia, is that he’s only the second Hindu to ever represent Pakistan. The first was his very own uncle. So by no means is he a slouch.

With Gayle finally leaving the crease after posting 93, Kaneria must have thought that Pakistan’s fortunes were about to change but as Cricinfo.com puts it:

…Pakistan had seemingly found a crack in the door from which they could barge in, but behind that door lay a guard dog - ravenous, fierce, and not about to let the intruders get in. A 77-ball century, before lunch, was testament to that.

Danish Kaneria took it all in stride though remarking that he didn’t mind being hit around by Lara, after all Lara is a great batsman and he does learn a lot by bowling to him.

“He is such a great batsman that it is an exciting challenge for me to bowl to him. I don’t think getting hit by the world’s number one batsman is a failure on my part. I am actually happy that a player as great as Lara hits me around. I learn from that but he has hit everyone from around the world.”

But you can understand the sheer frustration it must be to bowl to someone all afternoon into the next morning and have them not out. If as a child you’ve ever bowled to a brother, cousin or friend and not have him out, you know exactly what I mean. You can only play for so long without wanting to give up and go home in frustration. Unfortunately Kaneria couldn’t pick up and go home. He said:

“I was just thinking I wanted to block him and stop his scoring. He is a fantastic timer of the ball. He sees the ball from my hand and reads it so well which is the sign of a great player. I wanted to trap him but he was thinking ahead of me.

“I changed my action every now and then, used the crease a bit more. I tried different angles and variations and you have to give batsmen boundaries to buy their wickets. It just didn’t work this time.”

Sadly Lara’s heroic 216 came to an end after he held one out to Shoaib Malik off Kaneira’s bowling. The 591 scored by the team as a whole didn’t matter much as at the end of today’s play as the match ended in a predictable draw. (When last did we even score 591 in an innings?) But maybe in the third and final test starting on Monday we can draw this series with a win.

Yuh know, I should ah really eat the man mangoes and stop making style. Ah really bounce meh head dey.

P.S. I really need to revamp my Dotish Talk and Due Respect sections. There are just so many candidates nowadays.