Brian Lara to deliver MCC Spirit of Cricket Lecture at the Lord’s

Ever since ex-President of MCC – the late Lord Cowdrey – along with another former President, Ted Dexter, included the Spirit of Cricket as the Preamble to the 2000 Code of the Laws of cricket; a lecture on the same is delivered by eminent cricketing personalities during the English Summer.

The late Richie Benaud delivered the first ever Spirit of Cricket Cowdrey Lecture in 2001 and was followed by an illustrious list of cricketing greats which include: Sunil Gavaskar, Sir Clive Lloyd, Adam Gilchrist, Imran Khan, Tony Grieg, Sir Ian Botham and recently by Brendon McCullum in 2016. The event is aimed at discussing the prevalent issues faced by the game of cricket.

West Indies legend Brian Lara is set to follow suit as he is invited to deliver the Cowdrey Lecture at the iconic Lord’s Stadium on September 4. He will be the second cricketer from West Indies to speak at the annual event after the great Clive Lloyd did the same in 2004. The event will take place in the week of the England-West Indies Test at the Lords.

“I know from personal, and painful, experience, that Brian Lara is quite simply one of the best cricketers to have ever picked up a bat. His elegance at the crease was matched by his incredible ability to accumulate runs and punish the opposition. When he batted, he changed the landscape of the sport,” Matthew Fleming, the MCC president, said in a statement on Lord’s website.

“Now in retirement, he is demonstrating a perception and passion for the game which suggests he will continue to help shape the game into the future,” the statement quoted Fleming as saying.

Brian Lara indeed was one of the greatest batsmen to have played cricket. He called time on his career while being the top run-getter in the history of Test cricket at that time. His record of 400*, the most runs recorded in a single Test innings, will always be a tough one to breach along with his 501*-run knock for Warwickshire, which still stands as the record for most runs in a first-class innings for 23 years now.

Lara also had great numbers in ODI cricket. In 299 games, the southpaw scored 10,405 runs at 40.48 with 19 hundreds and 63 fifties. Nobody from the West Indies has ever scored more runs in either format than Brian Charles Lara.