Lara: The England Chronicles
Martin Chandler |Published: 2024
Pages: 310
Author: Lara, Brian
Publisher: Fairfield Books
Rating: 4.5 stars
Brian Lara was always an enigma. He has a fine record, averaging 53.17 over as many as 130 Tests. Yet surely that figure should have been higher. At times he shaped at the crease as if he could never be dismissed, and along with the record breaking innings that were sometimes testament as much to concentration and stamina as much as genius there were also some of the finest innings ever played in adversity. Yet there was human frailty there too.
I feel sure I once read somewhere that being Lara’s ghost was a difficult assignment, characterised by missed appointments and, when Lara could be tied down, snatched minutes at less than congenial venues. So I did have my doubts about this one, but if nothing else there need be no concerns that Lara did other than put many hours into this project, and that what are clearly his thoughts and opinions are convincingly articulated by Walker.
Lara: The England Chronicles is an autobiography, but not a complete one. Lara does, in the traditional manner, set out his roots and his upbringing but, once the cricket begins, the book concentrates on his games in or against England. Further volumes based on Africa, Asia and Australasia will in time make Lara’s the most detailed account of a cricket career ever assembled.
Such treatment is probably justified. Lara’s career began at a time when the West Indies were still world beaters but his development as a batsman coincided with the long years of decline. When he started out the West Indies team contained legendary names like Greenidge, Haynes, Richards, Richardson, Marshall, Ambrose, Bishop and Walsh. By the time his Test career ended the only legends left were himself and Shiv Chanderpaul.
And Lara has not simply produced an anodyne account of what happened. No one reading his story can be anything other than impressed with the amount of thought that he put into what he was doing at the time, and revisiting that in order to get his story into print. It is notable that he has offended some, Carl Hooper and Viv Richards being two in particular who have described gross misrepresentations and passages that are categorically false and have jointly called on Lara to issue a sincere apology for the harm caused.
Which I suppose must raise the possibility that Lara has perhaps overplayed his hand, or even sought to settle old scores, although as a reader I certainly didn’t get that impression. As anyone who has been in such a situation should realise where individuals are thrown together in relationships where emotions can, for whatever reason, run high their different perspectives are inevitably going to give rise to conflicting recollections.
In any event Lara is as critical of himself as, at times, he is of others and he certainly gives the impression of being entirely honest with his audience, at times not with out a degree of brutality. In addition there is certainly one episode which Lara need not have told his readers about, when in 1999 he booked into a clinic in New York for a psychiatric assessment. The results of the assessment are illuminating, as is the shrewd advice that Lara received there.
Whether the publication of Lara’s story in four separate and distinct parts is going to work in terms of the individual books making, collectively, a single coherent narrative I have to say I am not entirely convinced. The story will not be seamless, but depending on the precise contents of each book I suppose it must be possible that it will set a new template for others to follow, or at least those few whose cricketing lives and careers are as interesting as those of Brian Lara. Either way at the present time all we have is The England Chronicles, and that is most certainly a compelling read.
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