A match that had no meaning has suddenly acquired a significance. After the early exits of both sides, today's meeting between England and West Indies had promised to lend a sparkle to ditchwater by comparison.Instead, for both teams, it is the threshold of a new era. On Thursday morning, Duncan Fletcher, the coach who brought respectability to England and for one glorious summer helped generate almost unparalleled joy in a nation, announced the match would be his last in charge. Six hours later, having taken his side to a win over Bangladesh, Brian Lara, a genuine genius in a world where the word is used to describe those not fit to pack his bag, told a small press gathering that for him, too, today's match, a couple of weeks before his 38th birthday, would be his last international. At stumps, there will not be a dry eye in the house.
Not so long ago, Shane Warne was asked about the batsmen of his time. "Tendulkar first," he replied, "daylight next, then Lara." That, though, was an assessment of personal experience: Tendulkar played Warne like no other except, for a while, VVS Laxman. Ask Muttiah Muralitharan, Warne's only rival as the most influential bowler of modern times, and his response would differ. Lara slaughtered him.
Consensus, away from the adoration of India, would make Lara the defining batsman of his generation, one with more options than any other to a single delivery. He won matches, all round the world, too, in all conditions, against the best bowlers and sometimes in adversity against the odds. The unbeaten 153 he scored on this Kensington Oval to beat Australia all but single-handedly is arguably the greatest innings of modern times. Lara's figures speak for themselves: 11,953 Test runs at 52.88, with 34 hundreds; 10,387 ODI runs, with 19 hundreds. But to get inside the mind of a sportsman such as he, consider his two world-record Test scores and what they took. In April 1994, he found himself on a flat pitch at the Antigua Recreation Ground, in circumstances that allowed him to bat and bat. Others have had the record of Sir Garfield Sobers in their sights and stumbled, so imagine the mental strength it took to approach and, with the Caribbean holding its breath, surpass it. Then consider the willpower it took 10 years later to again hunt down the record, poached from him by Matthew Hayden only weeks before, and take it to 400.
England will be in no mood for sentimentality, however. Lara has caused them to suffer enough in the past. Besides, after a World Cup campaign that has plumbed the depths, there must be an imperative to finish with a measure of dignity, if only as a courtesy to Fletcher, culpable but by no means alone.
This is an opportunity to go for broke, for there is little to lose now. The chance is there, too, for Fletcher to forego the archaic strategy that got the side into such a mess and try something a bit more radical: putting Flintoff at the top of the order, perhaps, with instructions to have fun; moving Ravi Bopara up, too; trying some innovative bowling plans. Anything. It won't happen, of course because it might just work and no one wants to look silly. So, Michael Vaughan will try, and fail, to get his first one-day-international hundred, Kevin Pietersen will dig in with a rescue act, Sajid Mahmood will go round the park.
Duncan might smile, though. And what of Lara? He bats down the order now but today, surely, he will arrive at the crease early with time to play. In the course of four World Cups, he has made just two centuries, the only blot on a remarkable cv. Pure sentimentality demands a third.