“The next five days are very important in terms of my future as captain,” he said prior to the match. “No captain, no team, wants to go down for the first time in their history as losing all their Test matches at home.”

But the captain has vowed he will not raise the white flag, that he will soldier on amidst the personal and team battles.

In this series the champion left-hander’s personal form has matched that of the West Indies team as a whole, and with his men trailing 0-3 in the series many feel he should step aside.

“I have another Test match to focus on,” he said, “so the time for assessing my position of captain is not now,” he told Saturday’s media conference before returning to the dressing room where he wept openly.

“We really have to regroup, get it together and get it going in Antigua.”

The burden he carried into the match was, therefore, greater than any West Indies captain could ever have known – except he himself.

As he acknowledged, he was once more drinking in the last chance saloon.

But he had travelled the same rocky path before and he knew the way out.

AS he did five years ago, Brian Lara, this Easter week end, once more transformed a situation of deep personal and team crisis into one of critical revival and triumph at the scene of his most celebrated innings.

Lara, the modern game’s greatest exponent of batsmanship took the burden of all his West Indian people on his shoulders and transformed despair into a triumph.

As Christians around the world celebrated the ascendancy of the Prince of Peace into heaven, there were also celebrations here as the Prince of Port-of-Spain rose to new cricketing heights. More info

On Easter Sunday the sheer statistical weight of his second triple hundred speaks for itself, as did his first, the unforgettable 375 at the same Antigua Recreation Ground ten years ago that was then Test cricket’s record score.

Yesterday he went to the summit of cricket becoming the first man to make a quadruple-century in a Test innings. Lara’s unconquered 400 proclaimed beyond doubt his status as the modern game’s No.1 player.

His latest act of revival, like the first, cannot mask the serious problems that confront West Indies cricket or the reasons why his team should be relying on him to save them from the indignity of a clean sweep.

But at least it has rekindled the confidence and assuaged the anguish of a depressed people. More info

SEALED WITH A KISS. West Indies captain Brian Lara kissing the ground in celebration of his record-breaking score on the third day of the fourth and final Test against England at the Antigua Recreation Ground yesterday.

Click to hear what the world has to say about Lara's world record

All information courtesy of the Nation News.

Contributing writers Phillip Spooner, Tony Cozier, Hayden Gill and Andi Thornhill.

Photography Brooks LaTouche Photography

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