(Trinidad Guardian) Former West Indies fast bowler and current analyst Michael Holding says that he rates Brian Lara as a technically better player than Sachin Tendulkar. Speaking to The Telegraph of India, Holding said while Tendulkar made a lot more runs than Lara, he was certain that if he had Tendulkar and Lara at the two ends, batting against the same bowler, Lara would perform better. “I have never seen a batsman play spin and medium-pace better than Lara and I say that keeping in mind Vivian Richards, who is the best batsman I have seen.” Holding said Lara was the best batsman against spin and medium-pace but he rated Richards as the best batsman ever. “Viv made runs against everybody — the fastest bowlers in the world, like Imran Khan, the best swing bowlers in the world, like Richard Hadlee and Kapil Dev, the best spinners, like Bishan Bedi, (Bhagwat) Chandrasekhar, Abdul Qadir. He made runs against everybody. Lara made runs against spinners and medium-pacers, but used to be in trouble against real pace, like against a Shoaib Akhtar or a Wasim Akram.”
Holding said he had to work harder against certain batsmen. “Like Geoffrey Boycott. Boycott would never play out of his comfort zone. So, you knew that you had to produce a good delivery to get rid of him. Greg Chappell was another batsman but he was more dynamic than Boycott. Chappell used to play in the ‘V’ early on, he hardly played the hook shot or the pull shot. Later on, when he began to see the ball well, he would try different things.” Holding noted the one Indian batsman who stood out in his era was Sunil Gavaskar. “He and (Gundappa) Viswanath were the two best in the era when I played against India. There were some other guys who were very good too… Dilip Vengsarkar… Jimmy (Mohinder) Amarnath had a very good tour against us, in 1982-83… Different eras, a different set of batsmen.” He noted there were several great batsmen in that era. “It’s difficult to differentiate between them. They had different styles… I bowled to Greg Chappell… Then, if you think about the English batsmen, you had (David) Gower and you had (Graham) Gooch… They were two outstanding batsmen… I didn’t play Test cricket against Pakistan, but Zaheer Abbas and Majid Khan were fantastic players… Later, there was Javed Miandad. So, there were quite a few very good players at that time.” Strangely Holding identified Lawrence Rowe, the Jamaican and West Indies batsman as the cricketer he admired and wanted to emulate. “I admired the ease with which he batted. Later, I got to appreciate the skills of someone like Dennis Lillee and Andy Roberts. In my formative years, though, I used to learn a lot by watching Rowe.”
