After watching his team lose three in a row to England, Brian Lara seems to have been inspired to return to his old form. As I write he’s on 361 not out. Now the big question is whether I’ll be able to get any work done today while I see what happens next. The game can be followed “here”:http://www.cricinfo.com/db/NEW/LIVE/frames/ENG_WI_T4_10-14APR2004.html. (“This story”:http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/04/12/1081621893367.html?from=storyrhs about Brian Lara and Matthew Hayden probably won’t appeal to everyone but I thought it was touching.)
{ 19 comments }
harry 04.12.04 at 4:54 pm
Thanks Brian, he’s done it.
Brian Weatherson 04.12.04 at 5:07 pm
There’s still one more milestone to reach. If he reaches it in anything like as impressive style as he got the record it will be one of the best individual mornings in Test cricket for quite a while.
Duncan Young 04.12.04 at 5:08 pm
He’s done it – hope he gets to 400.
I suspect there wont be a result though. Will they try for 800?
Good to see that the Aussies don’t have all the records.
harry 04.12.04 at 5:29 pm
Have any of you subscribed to the web-based TV broadcast? Is it any good? The last thing I need is more distrction from work, but it would have been great to watch this.
Norbizness 04.12.04 at 5:44 pm
I’m just happy that I identified that you guys were talking about cricket or something.
Duncan Young 04.12.04 at 6:15 pm
400!!!
Brian Weatherson 04.12.04 at 6:21 pm
Incredible. There are some complaints over on cricinfo that he was putting himself ahead of the team, but I don’t think that’s true. Australia for years did quite well under the policy of batting until the other side couldn’t hope to win and then watching them be unable to defend for 6 or 8 or, in this case, over 15 hours. But really, who’s going to remember the result of the 4th Test in a series already lost? This is a simply amazing feat and Lara deserves nothing but praise today.
Another Damned Medievalist 04.12.04 at 6:29 pm
$00 and declared at 751 for 5. Jeepers. Will England catch them?
harry 04.12.04 at 6:42 pm
I’m with Brian on this, but an added point. After your team has been roundly defeated in a test series (by England, no less) an achievement like Lara’s can hardly be bad for morale. Esp. given that Lara, if a good captain, had to wait till Jacobs reached 100 anyway. What’s another half hour or so? And the bowlers have absolute safety to bowl against.
KESHAV BHAT 04.12.04 at 7:43 pm
AS Duncan says, i’m glad to note that the Aussie Team does not hold the record of every single milestone there is….
Brian Weatherson 04.12.04 at 8:36 pm
I, on the other hand, would be perfectly happy for Australians to hold all the records there are. But if a non-Australian is to hold the record, I’m very glad it’s Brian Lara. On that note…
As well as being the founding member of the club of quadruple-centurions, Lara became the second member of the club of batsmen with two triple-centuries. The other member is some guy named Bradman.
Gyan 04.12.04 at 8:57 pm
Kudos to Brian, but to be honest, the WI team is so inconsistent nowadays (751/5 vs 47 a.o.), they might as well, all convert to basketball.
Duncan Young 04.12.04 at 9:36 pm
England 107 for 5 in reply.
Ouch – the Windies might even win this one.
Andrew Edwards 04.12.04 at 10:00 pm
You have no idea how closely cricket talk ressembles pure gibberish to the North American outsider.
Brian Weatherson 04.12.04 at 10:10 pm
I guess Antigua isn’t part of North America as it’s usually conceived, but I would have thought some parts of the Carribean (Barbados?) might be. Being an island off the mainland does not disqualify a land mass from being part of North America. The San Juans are clearly part of North America in the relevant sense, as is Manhattan. So to some people who might be North Americans this stuff will be front page news for days.
Of course from an Australian perspective all this talk about political debates between liberals and conservatives that floods the blogospherre is a little baffling. I thought liberals and conservatives were the wets and dries of the Liberal Party, and I’m left wondering where the Labor supporters are.
magpie 04.12.04 at 10:43 pm
Cricket and baseball are closely related sports, yet devotees of one tend to find the other sport boring and incomprehensible. Similarly, those who appreciate football (real football — i.e., soccer) should be able to appreciate hockey (real hockey — i.e., played on ice) and vice versa. Baseball, for its part, is the U.S.A.’s finest gift to the world, just slightly above rock ‘n’ roll. Britain’s finest gifts would be, let’s see, football, cricket, and democracy, in that order, right?
Simon 04.13.04 at 3:34 am
Three of the 19 >300 scores have been scored this season, two if them being highest ever (Hayden, Sehwag, Lara). That’s quite a record, although two previous 300+ scores were in the same series (WI v PAK, 1957/58, when Sobers scored his record). This is really a golden time for batsmen, with 12 established batsmen averaging over 50 (Smith, Tendulkar, Hayden, Dravid, Ponting, Gilchrist, Sehwag, Kallis, Lara, Lehmann, Youhana and Inzamam, in that order). In addition, five newer players are averaging over 50 (Samaraweera, with 20 innings, Katich, Kamal, Hameed and Singh), and Gibbs and Rudoplh are on 49. Unsurprisingly, Australia lead the way, although India are not far behind, and with Gibbs and Rudolph bouncing around 50, South Africa may equal them.
John Isbell 04.13.04 at 3:06 pm
Well, nobody’s going to beat Sir Garfield Sobers’s record of 36 runs in an over, at Glamorgan IIRC. Somebody could equal it.
Dominic Murphy 04.14.04 at 4:17 pm
“Well, nobody’s going to beat Sir Garfield Sobers’s record of 36 runs in an over. . . Somebody could equal it”
Ravi Shastri already equalled it. Actually, if the over included a no-ball, that delivery would have to be re-bowled, so you could hit another six. In theory I guess there’s no upper limit to the number of runs you can get off an over if the bowler keeps overstepping.
Comments on this entry are closed.