A birthday collection - 10 amazing stories about Brian Lara

Brian Charles Lara turns 45 today. The world over, you'd have the choice of picking one of these three as the best of your era - Sachin, Lara and Ponting, and then fight incessantly with the fans of other two legends. That's how childhood was; understanding what made these players genius, and what differentiated them.Sachin and Ponting could make you numb with their statistics and the beauty they exuded on the field through their batting. Lara would frustrate if you witnessed his barren spells, and then when you learned to look at cricket beyond the numbers, you'd discover poetry in his shots. The backlift would provide you expectations - a whole world of them - and then the bat would swiftly come down in an arc, making his body and bat work as one majestic run-making machinery.As Rahul Bhattacharya put it so brilliantly - "Lara's batsmanship was the greatest pleasure I derived out of cricket in the last two decades along with the bowling of Wasim Akram, and I could have watched the game if they alone played it in the field. Lara batted with sensual beauty and gluttonous appetite."I was fortunate to have witnessed Lara do unimaginable things on a cricket field. On his birthday today, here's a collection of 10 interesting stories, not intended to encompass everything in his cricket, but what stand out as snippets of a career that are worth remembering long after he's finished playing the game.

#1 A dream unfulfilled

Lara was the 10th of 11 children in his family. His father Bunty was the bedrock on which his talents grew.

"This person you see today before you accepting this Hall of Fame honour is someone he (Bunty) moulded. He ensured that I had everything I needed to succeed as a cricketer and in life, even in trying times," Lara said in 2012, when he was inducted in the ICC Hall of Fame.

Probably the greatest pain Lara had to endure was Bunty's death due to a heart attack just before he could see the fruition of his son's efforts. Bunty passed away in 1989 before Lara could make his Test debut.

#2 A master craftsman

Lara practised in his childhood with pots placed as fielders, his mind working on a script of his own. There were Viv Richards, Clive Lloyds and Roy Fredericks in his team; in his mind he was the Lara of West Indies already, and irrespective of who bowled to him, he played like Lara, the greatest batsman of the world.

There's an interesting story about Lara revealed by Adam Gilchrist, who watched him from close quarters in a 2003 match. A fielder at deep midwicket was taken out and placed behind point, in company of another fielder already stationed in the area. Lara quietly murmured, "mistake", which was heard by Gilchrist. The next ball he dispatched over deep midwicket for a six.

Gilchrist then challenged him to attack the off-side, and like a master craftsman, he obliged, hitting two back-to-back boundaries between those two fielders. They were still the same old pots for him, and he knew how to find the gaps between them.

#3 The love of Sydney

Like Sachin, Lara's first visit to Australia resulted in an innings of such genius that it immediately pitched him into the spotlight on the world stage. Tendulkar's 114 in Perth and Lara's 277 in Sydney were two innings which announced the arrival of geniuses in our midst.

The 277 in 1993 signalled his penchant for big scores. It was a special innings for the Trinidadian and he fell in love with the venue. In 1996, he named his first daughter Sydney.

#4 A world record that almost wasn\'t

In 1994, 375 happened. At stumps on Day 2, Lara was not out on 320, 46 short of the world record. The man couldn't sleep. He woke up at 4 am on the nervy night. "I woke up, and couldn't get back to sleep for nerves," he said.

Lara then practised his shots before the mirror, and played 9 holes of golf to pass his time and calm the nerves. By the time his turn to bat came, quite expectedly, he was physically tired. He survived a false shot on 347, and finally on 365, on par with Sober's record, he got a short one from Phil Tufnell which he pulled for a boundary.

While the ground erupted and a horde of spectators descended upon the ground, including Sir Garry Sobers, one man almost had his heart in his mouth.

England wicket-keeper Jack Russell saw Lara swivel and nudge the bail on his off-stump out of its groove. Fear gripped him as he imagined appealing for Lara's wicket at that moment. "I'll be lynched," he later revealed his thoughts. However, the bail didn't fall off completely, remaining on the stumps but slightly off its groove, and Russell felt relieved.

After 6 minutes, when play finally resumed, the bowler asked where the ball was. It was still where Lara had hit it, near the hoardings on the boundary. Everyone had simply missed the chance to collect a great souvenir.

#5 Best mates with United star

Ex-Manchester United star Dwight Yorke is one of Lara's closest friends. When at Warwickshire, Yorke was playing for Aston Villa, and the they were almost inseparable, rushing off to play golf regularly after cricket.

Lara, the more accomplished superstar at that time, is credited by Yorke for mentoring him on the pathway of stardom. Yorke by his own admission was doing fine, but wasn't yet as famous as Lara, and he says that the cricketer helped him immensely in that sphere of life.

#6 The nerves during 501 not out

The 501 not out he made against Durham is one of the most unbelievably freaky things Lara ever did on the field. Dropped in the slips early in his innings, he talks about that knock as something that was intended to please the crowd at the beginning.

As the crowd kept growing and on the last day, reached almost 8,000-10,000 capacity, Lara grew nervous. He still scored at a brisk pace, but was taken by surprise when Keith Piper, batting at the other end, told him that only one over was left in the game before umpires called it off.

Lara was on 497 then, two short of equalling Hanif Mohammad's 499, and three short of breaking it. He then received a short one from medium-pacer John Morris which missed his bat and hit his helmet!

The next ball he received was pitched outside off and he drove it for a four, his name forever etched in the annals of cricket history.

#7 Lara\'s best innings - Part 1

The 1999 home series against Australia was a tough period for Lara. Pay disputes had affected his relations with the board, and the series was preceded by a 0-5 drubbing in South Africa. In the first Test of the Australia series, West Indies were 51 all out. It was all going downhill for Lara.

But then he scored a double century at Bridgetown, 213 precious runs which led West Indies to a 10-wicket win. Lara calls it his best innings. Not 400, not 375, not 501, and not even 153.

"The 213 against Australia in Jamaica is definitely my best innings. Going into that match, landing in Jamaica and knowing that everything was on the line - your captaincy, the series, respect and adoration by your fans. The mental strength I mustered during that week was something when I looked back, it was hard to measure anything against that."

#8 Lara\'s best innings - Part 2

Wisden, however, rated Lara's 153 in the next match better. Wisden, in fact, rated it as the second greatest innings in Test cricket after Sir Don Bradman's 270-run knock in the 1937 Ashes.

Batting with the No. 11 batsman, Lara guided West Indies to an improbable one-wicket victory after his team was 105/5 at one stage in chase of 308.

Lara had earlier been presented a Michael Jordan book by his childhood friend Nicholas Gomez, where Jordan talked about the technique of visualising.

"I remember calling Gomez at six o'clock in the morning, the last morning of the Test match, and we went about planning this innings against the best team in the world," Lara says about his preparation that morning.

#9 The ODI record

Lara ended his career with 299 ODIs, one short of completing 300, after his team's ouster in the 2007 World Cup at home. He had announced prior to the World Cup that he would be bidding ODIs goodbye after the global event, and was convinced he would play the landmark 300th match in the World Cup itself. But West Indies failed to move to the next round, keeping Lara stuck at 299.

"I was very confident that I'd play my 300th game at the World Cup. It wasn't to be. So be it," he said.

One match before the his last game, he made a surprising announcement, that he would be leaving not just the ODIs, but all formats of cricket. It was a sad ending for one of the greatest batsmen of all time.

A lesser known aspect of Lara's ODI career is his leg-break bowling. He took 4 wickets in his career at an astonishing average of just 15.25! He bowled just 8.1 overs in 5 ODIs, picking up two 2-wicket hauls - against England and Bangladesh.

#10 Rated the greatest by the \'Magician\'

Muttiah Muralitharan rates Brian Lara as the greatest he's ever bowled to, and that I think is kind of a balancing act for fans, with Shane Warne having rated Sachin as the toughest he faced.

While Warne has stories of Sharjah to tell, Murali has the tour of 2001 to remember, where Lara faced his mysteries and accumulated 688 runs in 6 innings at an average of 114.66.

Lara scored 20% of his team's runs in his career, a record bettered only by Sir Don Bradman (23%) and George Headley (21%). In that 2001 tour to Sri Lanka alone, Lara scored 42% of his team's total score, a record for a series of three or more Tests.