Brian Lara's debut in International Cricket

Brian Lara made his debut exactly one year after his contemporary Sachin made his debut. Lara has the record for scoring the highest individual score in an innings in both first class and Test cricket and he is considered as one of the toughest competitors ever. Many bowlers have termed him as the most difficult batsman to bowl at. He is the only man to score a quadraple century in Test cricket. He held the record of most Test runs which was later broken by Tendulkar.

Lara was a superstar in domestic circuit from a very tender age, he first came into limelight when he captained Trinidad and Tobago to a victory in the West Indies Youth Championship and here he also broken the the record of Carl Hooper for the highest score by setting a new record of 498 runs. He quickly got recognition and was selected for the T&T side where in his only second first class match against Barbados which had the Windies greats Joel Garner and Malcolm Marshal he scored 92.

His call for the West Indies side looked certain when he lead the West Indies youth side in the Youth World Cup to the Semi-Finals and later after his innings of 182 against India for the West Indies U-23 side, it was just a matter of time for him to make his international debut.

It was nearly impossible to neglect such a talented young cricketer and he was selected for the Carribean team but unfortunately he withdrew due to the death of his father. Later he became the youngest captain of T&T at the age of 20 and lead his troops successfully to win the domestic One Day tournament.

He was again called for the Windies team for the Pakistan tour and this time around he finally made his debut on Nov. 9, 1990 in the first ODI match of the series under the captaincy of Desmond Haynes. He could just score 11 runs before getting out to young Pakistani sensation Waqar Younis. He also made his Test debut on same tour.

He was consistently retained in the team as an young prospect since the team was not putting up some great performances. Till 1993 he did not have any century to his name but still was a permanant part of the Windies ODI side, and inspite of not having any big innings to his name he had many small but useful innings. His first Test ton was a blisterring knock of 277 at the SCG which turned around the fate of the series and the visitors won the series by a 2-1 margin. This innings established him in the Test side as well where he was not able to cement his place in the final eleven. After a month, he scored his maiden ODI ton as well and played an integral part in the Windies triumph in the Total Nations Cup. After this Brian Lara kept on growing in his career and established himself as one of the all time greats.