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Sunday, July 27, 2025

Lara: Give children unconditional support

by

20160711

For­mer West In­dies bat­ting star Bri­an Charles Lara called on par­ents and guardians to of­fer chil­dren in their care the un­con­di­tion­al sup­port re­quired dur­ing their most im­pres­sion­able years, to en­sure they emerged as up­stand­ing and out­stand­ing cit­i­zens.

Ad­dress­ing hun­dreds of sec­ondary school stu­dents dur­ing the three-day At­lantic Sports Desk Lead­er­ship Sym­po­sium held at the Pe­trea Hall at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya, yes­ter­day, Lara said ben­e­fit­ting from the guid­ance of his fa­ther Bun­ty Lara and leg­ends of the WI team nur­tured him to ap­pre­ci­ate the highs and man­age the lows of the sport when those mo­ments were pre­sent­ed.

"Hav­ing a men­tor is very im­por­tant. From the age of six, my dad, who was re­tired at the time, every Sun­day morn­ing he took me to the Har­vard Coach­ing Clin­ic. Whether you are six, sev­en or eight the one per­son you want to see with a smile on their face is your dad. My dad played a huge sup­port through­out my ca­reer up un­til he passed away. He was my num­ber one mo­ti­va­tor. I urge that all par­ents play a very im­por­tant part in their kids' lives, be­cause for me it was so nec­es­sary," he said.

The ex-skip­per re­called a point in his teenage years where be­ing spoilt caused him to dis­re­spect his fa­ther. They were head­ing off to a match and the younger Lara re­port­ed­ly told his fa­ther he was not wel­come to at­tend.

Mid­way through the match, how­ev­er, un­der a man­go tree in the dis­tance, Lara saw his dad in at­ten­dance.

"Ob­vi­ous­ly I apol­o­gised lat­er on in the evening and he took me home. But his sup­port was un­wa­ver­ing. We may have had our dif­fer­ences over a pe­ri­od of time, but if there was one com­mon de­nom­i­na­tor it was the fact that we need­ed each oth­er.

It is some­thing I could nev­er thank him for enough. Mov­ing to the West In­dies crick­et team, I was con­sid­ered a lit­tle bit of a pest, be­cause back in those days we had room­mates and my room­mates were guys like Gor­don Greenidge, the late Mal­colm Mar­shall and Desmond Haynes. At mid­night, they were still try­ing to shut me up be­cause I was al­ways talk­ing and ask­ing many ques­tions be­cause I want­ed in­for­ma­tion about West In­dies crick­et from them," he said.

Asked by a mem­ber of the youth au­di­ence to rec­om­mend ways peo­ple in so­ci­ety could deal with doubt, the for­mer bat­ting star said as a sports­man, es­pe­cial­ly in crick­et, ath­letes could find them­selves in awk­ward po­si­tions of fail­ing more than they suc­ceed.

Lara re­called scor­ing more runs un­der 40 than over. This, he said, arose be­cause of the lev­el of doubt that con­front­ed him more of­ten than not.

"I al­so re­al­ly had a dull pe­ri­od for about three years af­ter I broke the first world record. I re­al­ly couldn't han­dle all the star­dom. I be­lieve one of the most im­por­tant things is to have a very bal­anced out­look on every­thing. Most im­por­tant­ly, as well, is to have that foun­da­tion. Hav­ing a good foun­da­tion in every­thing that you are do­ing is some­thing you can go back to when things get tough. So when­ev­er I had doubts, I knew I could bat. I knew I had that ba­sic tech­nique to do so. And it was on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore I came back and had that be­lief in my­self," he said.

Lara added, "An­oth­er way to deal with doubt is the op­po­site. When things are go­ing well for you, try as much as pos­si­ble to make that pe­ri­od as long as pos­si­ble. What you find is, some young­sters who are very suc­cess­ful­ly, you can see them eas­i­ly dis­tract­ed, mov­ing on­to dif­fer­ent things, mak­ing more glam­orous stuff, prepar­ing to en­joy the pro­ceeds more than the process.

That's some­thing that I was very aware of. So when­ev­er I scored runs, I went to the video looked at the lit­tle mis­takes I made even though I scored runs be­cause I knew the op­po­si­tion was go­ing to at­tack me in this par­tic­u­lar way. I think you've got to have self be­lief. It's very im­por­tant that you do that. No­body is go­ing to have self-be­lief for you."


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