
No-one since Bradman
has built massive scores as often and as fast as Lara in his pomp. Even his
stance was thrilling - the bat raised high in the air, the weight poised on a
bent front knee, the eyes low and level. Then the guillotine would fall,
sending the ball flashing to the boundary. In the space of two months in 1994,
Lara's 375 and 501 not out broke world records for the highest Test and
first-class scores, but sudden fame turned him into a confused and
contradictory figure. During an inventive but largely fruitless spell as
captain of a fading team, Lara reiterated his genius by single-handedly defying
the 1998-99 Australian tourists with a sequence of 213, 8, 153 not out and 100.

Lara also holds the
record for the highest individual score in a test innings after scoring 400 not
out against England at Antigua in 2004. He is the only batsman to have ever scored a
hundred, a double century, a triple century, a quadruple century and a
quintuple century in first class games over the course of a senior career. Lara
also holds the test record of scoring most number of runs in a single over in a
Test match, when he scored 28 runs off an over by Robin
Peterson of South Africa in 2003.
Lara's match-winning
performance of 153 not out against Australia in Bridgetown,
Barbados
in 1999 has been rated by Wisden as the second best batting performance in the history
of Test cricket, next only to the 270 runs scored by Sir Donald Bradman in The Ashes
Test match of 1937. Muttiah Muralitharan, rated as the
greatest Test match bowler ever by Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, and the
highest wicket-taker in both Test cricket and in One Day Internationals (ODIs), has hailed
Lara as his toughest opponent among all batsmen in the world. Brian Lara is
popularly nicknamed as "The Prince of Port of Spain" or simply
"The Prince".
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