I am pleased that a mon­u­ment to re­mind us in per­pe­tu­ity of the achieve­ments of "the world's best bats­man," Bri­an Lara, has been erect­ed. I am al­so pleased that a mu­se­um to store his mem­o­ra­bil­ia has been es­tab­lished. I trust that ad­e­quate space has been al­lo­cat­ed for a mu­se­um at the yet to be com­plet­ed Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um to which the mem­o­ra­bil­ia, now se­cure­ly housed at the Queen's Park Oval, may be trans­ferred. But what about our oth­er two sport­ing he­roes, Hase­ly Craw­ford and Dwight Yorke? Why the de­lay in erect­ing ap­pro­pri­ate bronze stat­ues out­side the sta­di­ums named in their ho­n­our?

Thir­ty-six years and nine Olympic Games lat­er and no stat­ue has been erect­ed to com­mem­o­rate that great achieve­ment in our sport­ing his­to­ry by Hase­ly at the 1976 Mon­tre­al Olympic Games. It will please me that, in this year of our 50th an­niver­sary of in­de­pen­dence and al­so an Olympics year, that an an­nounce­ment is made of a de­ci­sion to erect an ap­pro­pri­ate mon­u­ment of Hase­ly in his char­ac­ter­is­tic win­ning pos­ture. I wrote to for­mer Sports Min­is­ters Boynes and Hart and to the in­cum­bent Anil Roberts draw­ing to their at­ten­tion this "over­sight" but I was not favoured with even an ac­knowl­edge­ment of the re­ceipt of my let­ter.

Ian Lam­bie

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