KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Al­though his mas­tery lay in crick­et, world record hold­er Bri­an Lara had a broad­er mes­sage for the stu­dents of Na­pari­ma Col­lege—one of ded­i­ca­tion, sac­ri­fice, and am­bi­tion.

Speak­ing at a spe­cial book sign­ing and do­na­tion event for his new book, Lara: The Eng­land Chron­i­cles on Thurs­day, the leg­endary bats­man did not just sign copies.

He al­so demon­strat­ed a few tech­niques, much to the de­light of the young crick­eters in at­ten­dance.

The event was made pos­si­ble by con­trac­tor and past stu­dent Dave Singh, who pur­chased and do­nat­ed 150 copies of Lara’s book. The book, which comes 17 years af­ter his re­tire­ment from in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et, re­counts Lara’s his­toric per­for­mances against Eng­land, in­clud­ing his record-break­ing feat in An­tigua in 1994.

He said his pri­ma­ry mo­ti­va­tion for writ­ing the book was to in­spire young peo­ple just as he had been in­spired by his child­hood he­roes, Gus Lo­gie, Sir Vi­vian Richards, Lar­ry Gomes, Gor­don Greenidge and Desmond Haynes.

“As I have said, this does not just serve for any­body in the sport­ing field. If you want to be a doc­tor, a lawyer, or what­ev­er you want to be, there are cer­tain traits that you have to have to be suc­cess­ful. You got to be ded­i­cat­ed. You got to dream big. You got to have the dis­ci­pline. You got to make the sac­ri­fices. You got to be will­ing to go down the road that no one else has gone down,” he said.

En­cour­ag­ing the stu­dents to think be­yond con­ven­tion­al paths, Lara em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of carv­ing out their own jour­ney rather than sim­ply fol­low­ing the crowd.

He ad­mit­ted that his road to suc­cess was chal­leng­ing and of­ten lone­ly, but it was pre­cise­ly that de­ter­mi­na­tion that set him apart.

“I hope my book makes an im­pres­sion on them,” he said.

Prin­ci­pal Roger Ali high­light­ed that Lara: The Eng­land Chron­i­cles is more than just a col­lec­tion of crick­et­ing mem­o­ries—it is a tes­ta­ment to ex­cel­lence and re­silience, val­ues that align with Na­pari­ma Col­lege’s val­ues.

“It cap­tures Lara’s leg­endary jour­ney and serves as a source of in­spi­ra­tion, not on­ly for ath­letes but for schol­ars and fu­ture lead­ers in Trinidad and To­ba­go and across the world,” he said.

Singh, the past stu­dent who made the do­na­tion pos­si­ble, re­flect­ed on his school days, re­call­ing the many guest speak­ers he had lis­tened to—some in­spir­ing, some for­get­table.

“En­joy your time at Na­pari­ma, but al­so de­vel­op the dis­ci­pline that will car­ry you for­ward, no mat­ter the ca­reer path you choose,” he said.