Despite hanging up his boots three years ago, when he visited the Kanz Jewels store in Deira Gold Souk on Saturday, he was mobbed by cricket fans forcing the store to seek police help to escort him into his car. Lara, who broke the world records for highest Test score with an unbeaten 400 and an unconquered 501 in first class cricket to be as prolific as Donald Bradman, said that India's Sachin Tendulkar is the Bradman of the present period. Lara said he is enjoying his retirement. "It has been three years and my daughter is now 14 years old. I have got a second daughter who is now seven months old. I am generally relaxed and doing a little bit of business. I just got back into cricket by playing three games in a Twenty20 tournament in Zimbabwe and had a good time."
Lara said he believes he can make a contribution to Zimbabwe where he will take up a coaching job. "I will look more into the mental side of their batting than the actual physical or talent grooming. I will be with them during the key moments before some of their important tours, especially before the World Cup." Lara said he was disappointed that nothing has improved with West Indies cricket since he left the game. "I will not blame the players because I don't think we have the infrastructure that can generate good consistent cricket against the best. "Until we fix the infrastructure we might see some wonderful performances one day and some awful performances another day. It could be as usual more failures than success.
"I want the infrastructure to change before we actually think about getting back to the top." Asked to compare Ricky Ponting and Sachin Tendulkar, Lara described both as great players. "Tendulkar has shown the world what he is capable of and his longevity in the game is something to be really appreciated. "The time he will spend on the game, records are going to tumble. The fact that someone can be there from the age of 16 and still at the age of 37 perform brilliantly is something that I cherish more than anything else. "I am really looking forward to his 50th Test century and for him to score nearly 15,000 Test runs and over 17,000 runs in one-day cricket is itself a remarkable achievement.
"He is our period's Don Bradman. Forget the difference in averages with Bradman but whoever I have spoken to who have seen very old players in action; they believe that he [Bradman] would not have averaged 99 in today's cricket. So I believe that Sachin is our period's Bradman."
Lara said he remains unperturbed about his Test record of 400 being broken. "It does not matter if it is broken because I believe that it is going to be broken one day. Don't forget that it took 26 years to break Garfield Sobers' record. With the advent of Twenty20 cricket we've seen lot of attacking players come forward. "The batsmen who have challenged the records are [Virender] Sehwag, [Sanath] Jayasuriya and [Chris] Gayle and they hit the ball around. So my records are under threat but when it is broken I will say that the person who did it really deserves it."