TOO good to be true but it is. Brian Lara widely regarded as one of the world’s finest batsmen ever is expected to visit Rwanda sometime next month.

Lara who will also be visiting Uganda from 6th June to 13th June, is expected to fly in for a day’s visit. While in Kigali, the cricket icon is expected to pay a courtesy call on President Paul Kagame, meet the minister of sports and culture (Joseph Habineza) as well as Rwanda Cricket Association (RCA) officials.

A Twenty20 game will also be on the cards.
Until 2007 when the West Indian batsman retired, he eclipsed several records and landmarks in the sport.

To-date, Lara holds several world records for high scoring. He has the highest individual score in both first-class cricket (501 not out for Warwickshire against Durham in 1994) and Test cricket (400 not out for the West Indies against England in 2004).

Remarkably, he is the only batsman to have ever scored a hundred, a double century, a triple century, a quadruple century and a quintuple century in first class games over the course of a senior career.

Lara also holds the test record of scoring most number of runs in a single over, when he scored 28 runs off an over by Robin Peterson of South Africa in 2003.

On 16 December 2006, he became the first player for the West Indies to pass 10,000 One Day International runs along with Sachin Tendulkar, one of only two players to do so in both forms of the game.

After the 2007 World Cup and shortly before his retirement, Australia’s Glenn McGrath-one of the game’s legendary bowlers stated that Lara was the greatest batsman that he had ever bowled to.

Off the field

Since his retirement, Brian Lara has established the Pearl and Bunty Lara Foundation, which is a charitable organisation in memory of his parents that aims to address health and social care issues. He is also an Ambassador for Sport of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.

Statistics
Test Centuries-34
ODI Centuries-19
Test Cricket
Man of the Match Awards – 12
ODI Cricket
Man of the Match Awards – 30

Ends