West Indies batting legend Brian Lara recently opened up about his first encounter with the great Sir Vivian Richards when the former had the opportunity to be in the same team as the latter for his debut Test match. And the first meeting wasn’t very kind to Lara as he opened up on the experience on the Stick to Cricket podcast.
“I got an opportunity to play with him (Richards). My first Test match was in Trinidad and I got the letter from the board “You’re on the team. Report 9 AM tomorrow morning for practice”. And I got there at 8 AM, start a little practice in the Queen’s Park Oval with my brother and then the team arrived. And this is all my heroes- Viv (Richards), (Gordon) Greenidge, (Desmond) Haynes, Malcolm Marshall, everybody, all the big boys and they went into the dressing room. Tiny dressing room in those days and I said to my brother, “It’s time I go say hello to my teammates”. And while I was walking to the dressing room, my cricket bag came flying out the dressing room, spat everything, just all over the place. I picked it up, packed it back and walked back into the dressing room. And where I placed my bag is where Sir Vivian places his bag. So I spent the first 5 days of my Test career in the bathroom,” Lara said.
“I spent the first five days in the bathroom.” 🛁
Brian Lara on sharing a dressing room with his idol Sir Vivian Richards 🤩 pic.twitter.com/lgt2R0h9yK
— Stick to Cricket (@StickToCricket) July 16, 2025
He also revealed how he and his brothers used to stay up all night to listen to the radio commentary of West Indies tour of Australia.
“You’ve have good experience with him but. It’s great like you know in 75/76 when they were playing in Australia. as a little kid, small house, three bedrooms and cricket started maybe at 8 PM in Trinidad 8/9 PM. The Australian time 6, about 15 hours ahead of Trinidad. And I could hear my dad’s radio in the room. We had school the next day so he allowed us to listen to the first session and then we had to go to bed and his bedroom is just at the top and we can hear his radio but we had ours on. So when his door cracked, you know, we would all go to a little bit of a snore,” Lara said.
