'Cricket is ruining my life' - Lara

A picture of Brian Lara as a player ill at ease with his captain, manager, some of his team-mates and even the game itself emerged yesterday from leaked excerpts of official reports on last summer's West Indies tour of England.

"He is always saying that 'cricket is ruining my life'," the team manager, Wes Hall, noted in his report carried in the Trinidad Guardian.

"I think, however, that cricket will save it. The commercial demand on his time is like an albatross around his neck. I believe Lara has a great role to play in West Indies cricket. It is imperative that we be aware of the pressure he undergoes."

Hall revealed that Lara stormed out of a heated team meeting following the Manchester Test after a verbal confrontation with captain Richie Richardson and announced, "I retire". Hall said he was "staggered" when Lara told him he was willing to forgo a recent offer of pounds 3m from a bat manufacturer by his decision.

After an absence of three days, the brilliant left-hander was persuaded to rejoin the team by West Indies' board president, Peter Short, but was subsequently fined 10 per cent of his tour fee for his action. Piqued at the discipline, only handed down late last month, Lara withdrew from the team currently struggling without him on tour in Australia.

Richardson gives his side of the story in his report. He said Lara blamed him for the indiscipline in the team and claimed that he knew other players who felt the same way. "I responded by saying that if the players felt that way and were not happy with my captaincy I would resign, but I would not be pushed by anyone who has got ambitious agendas," Richardson wrote. He has been retained as captain for the Australian tour and for the World Cup in February and March.

Relating another incident, when Lara was given permission early in the tour to return to Trinidad on urgent business, Richardson called his "behaviour and conduct" to Hall "abominable".

"Wes Hall is one of the most respected Caribbean personalities and the way Brian spoke to him, in view of the fact that he was manager of the team, left me in shock," Richardson added.

The latest revelations - including criticism by Ian Bishop of the attitude of fellow fast bowlers Curtly Ambrose and Kenny Benjamin - have intensified the drama that has both fascinated and dismayed the West Indies cricket public.

Obsessed with the one sport that has united the diverse former British colonies in the Caribbean for almost 100 years, they had been taken aback by the recent upheavals. The possibility that Lara, the latest in their long line of great batsmen, may be lost to Test cricket has depressed them.

The West Indies Board has summoned a special meeting in Barbados on Friday to see how it can bring the impasse to what Short calls "a happy ending".

The way out is not easy. It is clear that Lara is unlikely to return under Richardson and into a team in which he cannot feel comfortable. The West Indies rely so heavily on his batting that there is a groundswell of opinion that everything should be done, again in Short's phrase, "to rehabilitate" him.

But not all members of the Board are inclined to bend over backwards quite as far as Lara seems to be demanding.

The West Indies batting, meanwhile, continues to falter in Australia. They were all out for 92 in losing to the Under-21s of the Academy yesterday by eight wickets, prompting Richardson to say of his side's batting: "Pathetic, man. I can't recall seeing us bat worse than that."