In the middle of the current World Cup discourses, it is interesting to notice in the evaluation of batsmen, that often the deliberation as to quality often centres around the statistics – who scored the most runs; who hit the fastest century; who had the most boundaries, etc.
Certainly there is value in these comparisons, but ultimately among the dominant players down through the years, it is true in cricket, as it is in most public spectacles, that it is the performer who comes along, once in a lifetime, with that style or panache unlike any other, who captivates us forever and leaves us counting him/her as our best-ever. In that context, given the current justifiable adulation for Sachin Tendulkar and his glorious cricket career, my hand is up for Brian Lara as the most thrilling performer ever to hold a cricket bat.
The matter of how much runs, while important, was overshadowed by Lara time and again by the manner in which he played the game. More than a matter of how