A god, a mortal

While everyone around him collapsed, Lara racked 202 in the 1st Test at Wanderers © Getty Images

Anyone looking for reasons to declare Brian Lara their favourite cricketer could, without any footwork, find 876: the total of 375 plus 501, the scores he posted in his world record single Test and first-class innings. Lara is one of history's most successful cricketers; but does that mean we have to like him? You could recognise Adolf Hitler's accomplishment in stabilising the German currency without calling him your favourite politician.

For the six weeks between the 375 and the 501, Brian Lara was the cricket world's darling. He answered his mobile phone while fielding during a Warwickshire match and a delighted English media praised his charming innocence; the same act a few months later would probably have been pilloried as all-consuming arrogance. Less than a year after the 375, many commentators had decided Lara played the role of international playboy better than that of international cricketer; and they had some, perhaps a great deal of, justification: Lara did not handle the stresses of instant fame well.

Some would say he became a complete dickhead; others that he never was anything but, and only his accomplishments could disguise his true personality for a little while. I met him before he acquired the defensive scowl, while he was still the polite young man from the little village of Santa Cruz; and I have watched his descent from the stars - some would call it a plummet - and feel sure he will come back down to earth in the same Santa Cruz.

Few people are in a position to appreciate the exquisite torture Lara survived. He was cricket's first international superstar, his fame surpassing overnight and overseas, the kind of adulation that, normally, only Indian cricketers enjoy, and that only at home. It changes your attitude to everything when, everywhere you go, everyone knows who you are. And this happened at precisely the age when Lara was most susceptible and least equipped to handle its negative aspects. There is no pressure on you to remain a nice guy when beautiful women will line up - indeed, try to jump the queue - to go home with you just because you are you.

In 1994, at the height of his fame, I spent a couple of weeks with Lara in London and Birmingham. I learned to walk at snail's pace, placing one foot ahead of the other and pausing before the next step because, wherever we went, there was always at least one television camera crew walking backwards just ahead of us, filming. If Brian Lara farted or took a blonde to lunch, the BBC got the story. He had two or three mobile phones and two lines at his Birmingham flat, and all of them rang all the time. At 1 am, he 'd be on two phones, talking to South Africa and Miami at the same time, with me keeping London and Port-of-Spain chatting until he could get to them. He was a good-looking young black man at the top of his game and everyone wanted a piece of him for themselves or their charity.

Lara after yet another low score in Australia: a far cry from the heady years of 1994-95 © Getty Images

We should be slow to judge what that kind of pressure can do to you after you've lived with it day and night for a year. But we weren't. We attacked him like Baghdad. He defended himself from the world with passive aggression and we in the media actively turned it into great copy. He scowled, we grinned; and ran the hatchet-job story. Newspapers savaged Lara for not being Michael Jordan but the wonder is he didn't become Diego Maradona. It is because Lara, despite his superhuman gifts, was frail that he is my favourite cricketer, ahead of even Courtney Walsh, Curtly Ambrose, Jonty Rhodes, Steve Waugh, Viv Richards and Ian Botham. None of these men ever wavered like Brian, it is true; but none ever had the very foundation of themselves shaken the way he had.

The West Indian captaincy, handed to him almost as easily as the honour of many a woman from Kingston to Kashmir, was his undoing. He, who should have led West Indies cricket to dizzying heights, piloted it to its worst moment, the dread 51 all out. You or I would have been crushed. Brian Lara rebounded to beat Steve Waugh's mighty Australia almost single-handed in the next two Test matches.

When he gave up the captaincy and hid himself away, many hoped his mansion on the hill overlooking Port-of-Spain would become his mausoleum. But he rose again and is back wearing the captain's cap; and it fits better this time. Only Carl Hooper might argue he does not deserve it. For all the majesty of his performances in the middle, Lara's greatest battles were fought in an even more dangerous battleground: within himself.

And, though no one can ever be sure what lies in the heart of another, it seems to me that Brian Lara triumphed over his own dark side and emerged into the light of understanding and adult responsibility. And he did it without his bat. And this is why Brian Lara is my favourite cricketer. Yes, he bats like a god; but he struggles like the rest of us flawed mortals to be a decent human being.