Description

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.”
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.