‘Don’t talk to him, he would get bored and get out’ – Deep Dasgupta on teammates’ suggestions to dismiss Brian Lara in 2002

Brian Lara was one of India’s focal points when they toured the West Indies for a five-match Test series way back in 2002. The visitors, led by Sourav Ganguly, knew the importance of keeping Lara quiet to make inroads into the opposition batting. Deep Dasgupta, the former Indian cricketer, has made some revelations on how the team planned to get rid of the left-handed Lara.

Even as there were serious discussions, Dasgupta said that few of his teammates hilariously suggested not talking to Lara, getting him bored. Deep, who played only one Test in the series, was a tad taken aback by the solution.

I was like, what are you saying?: Deep Dasgupta

“One of the funniest things that ever happened was when we were playing against the West Indies in 2002. It was the first Test in Guyana and in the team meeting we were talking about how to handle Brian Lara.

Some of the things that were said in that meeting were ‘don’t talk to him’. I was like, what are you saying? They said ‘he would get bored and get out,” Dasgupta was quoted as saying in a show called 22 Yarns hosted by Gaurav Kapoor.

“Whenever a spinner would bowl, I was behind the wicket and Rahul was there in the slips, Brian would play a ball, he would turn around wanting to talk to me or Rahul and we would turn our backs and look the other way. He would want to start a conversation and we would be like, no, nothing happening,” he added.

In that series, Lara wasn’t at his best. The southpaw could only manage 202 runs at 28.85 with a top score of 55. It was Carl Hooper and Shivnarine Chanderpaul, who scored 579 and 562 runs respectively to torment the Indian bowling attack.

India took a 1-0 lead in the series with a 37-run victory in Port of Spain. However, the Caribbean team won the Barbados and Jamaica Test to win the series 2-1. The series also happened to be Dasgupta’s last in international cricket after he made his India debut in October 2001.