Sold Out Signed Paperback edition. Sports Cricket Autobiography Thirty years since his first world record, and twenty since he reclaimed it with Test cricket’s only quadruple century, Lara is ready to tell his own story: the incomparable highs and harrowing lows of a life lived on the edge. Paperback 320 pages Fairfield Books 2024 Brian Lara with Phil Walker.
The true untouchables of sport possess a kind of mystery, and Lara – thrillseeker, record holder, genius – stands as perhaps cricket’s deepest enigma, at once a beautifully free strokemaker whose creativity captured an era, and an often tortured presence at the heart of a faltering West Indies side as the great teams of the past faded from view.
He saved his best work for England. His two world-record Test innings both came against them, ten years apart. His otherworldly 501*, the highest score in cricket history, took place in Birmingham. Even his final game for the West Indies came against England.
He understood what was at stake, what he stood for. Lara saw himself as a torchbearer for generations of revolutionary cricketers from the Caribbean stretching back through the ages, their deeds reilluminated with flashes of his own. It was against this backdrop that Lara produced some of the most extraordinary batting ever seen on the cricket field.
“I could always feel those moments in my bones,” he writes. “When our prowess on the cricket field was used to help in the fight for independence from our colonial masters.”
About the author:
Brian Lara is one of cricket’s greatest players. Holder of the world record for the highest Test score
and the only player in history to breach the 500-run mark in a first-class innings, the left-hander bestrode the game
in the years either side of the millennium. Since retirement he has turned his hand to commentary and coaching –
taking charge of Sunrisers Hyderabad in the IPL – and set up the Bunty and Pearl Foundation, a charity in memory
of his parents that aims to tackle health and social care issues primarily in his native Trinidad. This is his first fully
co-authored book.
