KEY POINTS:
The Prince of batsmen deserves a better farewell than this.
Considering the mastery of his timing with cricket bat in hand, Lara could have chosen a better way to announce his retirement from the game he has graced for 17 years.
No doubt it will emerge in due course that his hand has been forced by the politics of West Indies cricket.
But it means that our final glimpse of him will be in an inconsequential one-day game against England in Barbados this weekend, the last of a seemingly interminable set of World Cup preliminary fixtures.
Both teams have already been eliminated from the tournament and would doubtless rather be anywhere than going through the motions in Barbados -- 340km across the sea from Lara's home in Trinidad.
At least the game might now draw a crowd.
There is no comparison with the farewells for Lara's two great contemporaries and fellow world record-holders Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath.
Both were feted during the Ashes-winning summer; Warne taking his 700th test wicket in Melbourne and McGrath claiming his 563rd with his final ball in tests, on his home ground in Sydney. He now hopes to leave the international game in a week's time holding aloft the World Cup.
A measure of Lara's greatness is that his career coincided with these two formidable bowlers, both of whom rate him alongside Sachin Tendulkar as the finest they had bowled to.
But while Tendulkar is a man of calculated precision, accumulating numbers like an accountant, Lara made his runs purely by instinct.
In many ways he is a throwback to the romantic era of West Indies batsmanship.
He crouches low over the bat and lifts it in an extravagant semi-circle that by some miracle delivers the blade to the impact point.
He drops to one knee to flay past cover-point. He swivels on one leg to pull over square, he dances down to loft the spinners over the boundary. There are echoes of Worrell, Kanhai and Sobers in his strokeplay.
Although his world records of 375 and 400 not out came against England, Lara was never so good as when he was playing Australia, against whom he averaged 51.
He chose the Sydney test of 1993 to play the innings he rates as his favourite -- 277 for his maiden test century.
It was the innings with which he declared his genius to the world. He also chose to name his daughter Sydney in its honour.
In 1999 he thwarted Steve Waugh's debut as captain by hauling his team from apparent disarray to a two-all draw in the Caribbean.
Lara made 213, 153 not out and 100 in consecutive tests in a performance so dominating that Warne was dropped from the team.
Wisden.com later rated his match-winning 153 not out in Barbados as the second best innings in history.
In Adelaide in November 2005, Lara scored his eighth test double-century and overtook Allan Border's world record aggregate of 11,174 runs.
Although he leaves the game with a fistful of records, including highest test innings (400 not out), highest first class innings (501 not out), highest test aggregate (11,953) and most test runs in an over (28), Lara's legacy cannot be measured in figures.
"I just want to be remembered as someone who went out there and tried to entertain," he said.
"It is a sport where people pay to come through the turnstiles and watch you and it is most important that someone can leave and say they have enjoyed watching (me) play."
- AAP
