Lara’s waltzing to his theme but can he hear the one wrong note?

His assaults on Stuart MacGill and Danish Kaneria have been awesome; occasionally the bowler has slipped one through Lara’s arsenal but the damage done was well more than the cut suffered.

Word spreads quickly on the cricket circuit and so, in the tsunami relief game at Lords, it was no surprise to see Anil Kumble bowling skidders at Lara. The great man backed his feet again, this time jumping back and delicately cutting to third man; so delicate that a patient might not have felt an incision.

Lara is enjoying himself. The backlift still makes an extravagant arc, again like with the waltz to a spinner’s length an action that is fraught with danger in the hands of ordinary men. The more extravagant the backlift the greater the opportunity for a quick bowler to slip a ball through onto the stumps but Lara seems to relish this tactic; almost inviting the ambush and then showing he was waiting for it in the first place!

There seems a new freedom now in Lara’s mind. The conflicts of a brilliant but slightly wayward youth appear to have been erased, the responsibility that seems to replace a smile with a scowl seems easily handled now. When the heaviness in the mind goes, it takes the heaviness in the feet with it.

Lara’s bearing now carries a lightness to it, not that of flippant youth but of the knowledge that posterity has reserved space for him. In 14 years in international cricket he has seen it all. He has displayed arrogance and petulance, has disenchanted former greats and frustrated his supporters, has taunted the game and seemed to play with bats that carried only edges and no middle.

And yet he has touched West Indian pride, has stood up against attacks on raw and young team-mates, has embellished the game and enriched people’s lives. He has shown that an artist’s performance is a function of where he is in life and what influences his thoughts.

But the more Lara dazzles, the more he seems to cast a shadow on his team-mates. Wizardry can do that, it can cause lesser people to believe their job is to find the shadows and stand within them. A player’s brilliance can sometimes blind his own side to the possibilities that exist.

It needn’t be that way; a great player can lend a helping hand, carry those that are weaker across the flood but he can, by his sheer magic, convince the others that they do not belong. They can stand in awe and gape when they should be scoring runs themselves.

Chris Gayle and Ramnaresh Sarwan can be big players too, not Laras but big players nonetheless, but one is wedded to inconsistency and the other has hit a plateau. It is a tough situation, the genius cannot descend but by his artistry he overwhelms his own team.

Now two records approach Lara, one good the other bitter. Soon, he will be the greatest run-getter in the history of the game and, if this purple patch lasts, he will also score more hundreds than anyone else. And almost inevitably he will have played more losing matches than anyone else in the history of the game. He that giveth taketh in the same breath!

Allan Border and Steve Waugh, two that still stand ahead of him, weren’t quite as gifted, they were like forts to Lara’s horseman, but they played in winning teams. When the record is his, and his alone, even if for the moment, and Lara takes off those dancing shoes, he will ask himself what he would have preferred.