A con­test be­tween the ma­te­r­i­al and the philo­soph­i­cal; be­tween the val­ue of hold­ing a Test bat­ting record or to ac­knowl­edge class over quan­ti­ty, is one way to in­ter­pret what hap­pened ear­li­er this week when South African bats­man Wiaan Mul­der de­clined his pos­si­ble snatch­ing of the world record away from Bri­an Lara, one of the great bats­men of the gen­er­a­tion of Sachin Ten­dulkars, Ricky Pontings and Jacques Kallis’.

Mul­der, an un­known be­fore this week’s run glut against the low­ly-rat­ed Zim­bab­we, opt­ed for the no­ble, de­clar­ing his coun­try’s in­nings at 626-5 wick­ets with his score on 367 not out.

“Let’s be re­al, Bri­an Lara is a leg­end. For some­one of that stature to keep the record is pret­ty spe­cial,” said the 37-year-old South African.

He seemed to have com­pound­ed what many have thought to be a fool­ish de­ci­sion by say­ing if he were to ever get in­to such a po­si­tion again, “I would do the same.” The South African cap­tain for the Zim­bab­we se­ries em­pha­sised what he con­sid­ers to be the great­ness of Lara as be­ing de­serv­ing of con­tin­u­ing to hold the record of the high­est score in Test crick­et.

“I think Bri­an Lara keep­ing the record is ex­act­ly how it should be,” was the view Mul­der left with those who think him crazy, even cow­ard­ly, not to have at­tempt­ed to erase Lara’s record.

The frac­tured view on Mul­der’s de­ci­sion is about mea­sur­ing and valu­ing qual­i­ty over quan­ti­ty. As is well known, Lara’s 400 not out was made against Eng­land, a ma­jor Test team his­tor­i­cal­ly and in the con­tem­po­rary pe­ri­od. More­over, Lara grabbed back the record from Aus­tralian bats­man Matthew Hay­den, who elim­i­nat­ed Lara’s orig­i­nal record of 375 not out, which came af­ter Garfield Sobers’ long­stand­ing 365 not out.

Crick­eters and that strange group of crick­et fa­nat­ics who ob­serve the fin­er de­tails of bat­ting, have found an­oth­er point to ar­gue about and we can be as­sured that the con­tentions will go on for gen­er­a­tions over a brew or two.

Those ar­gu­ments may cen­tre on Mul­der’s stance (not the one he takes to face a bowler) and his rea­son­ing as to why he opt­ed for what on the sur­face may seem to be fool­ish. Af­ter all, if he was able to break the record, it would sure­ly have placed him amongst sig­nif­i­cant bats­men of all time and made him known around the crick­et­ing world in a pos­i­tive light. In con­tra­dic­tion though, if he had bro­ken the record there would be those who would ar­gue to the last that he is un­wor­thy of break­ing the great West In­di­an Lara’s bat­ting record.

All of that notwith­stand­ing, Mul­der’s dis­po­si­tion, his crick­et­ing val­ues, his judge­ment about who is de­serv­ing to hold the man­tle in bat­ting in a world that has long giv­en way to the ma­te­r­i­al of life in the 21st cen­tu­ry are on the record. So too is his as­ser­tion that on­ly the best amongst bats­men should hold such a pride of place in the cul­ture of the game he ob­vi­ous­ly loves—a re­fresh­ing throw­back to virtue of a dif­fer­ent age.