Brian, I hesitate to ask this,' I said, 'and I do so with all due respect. But, Brian, ask it I must. Brian, taking into account your run of low scores against England in this series and form of late that is possibly below the standards you expect of yourself… [by this time I was choking back the tears]... Brian, are you at all concerned that your great talent may be... on the wane?'
Three days later, West Indies declared their first innings closed at 751 for five. Lara was not out 400, the highest Test score ever made. He had batted for 778 minutes, faced 582 balls, hit 43 fours and four sixes and it was all my fault.
More memories? I won’t mention the first time I met Brian, when we were team-mates in a charity match as Castle Ashby, Northamptonshire in the early Nineties, when he got a duck and I scored 50, because that would be showing off. Get in.
And I certainly won't mention the time a Scottish colleague of mine, himself an occasional left-hander, attempted to demonstrate a flaw he had spotted in Lara's technique by moving back and across and promptly passing out blind drunk at The Pelican Bar, Port-of-Spain.
When discussing the claims of batsmen such as WG Grace, Don Bradman, George Headley and Jack Hobbs, Graeme Pollock, Viv Richards, Javed Miandad and others to the title of the greatest batsman of all time, the rivalry between Lara and Sachin Tendulkar for the best of recent times always crops up.
At the obvious risk of upsetting about a billion Indians, my own view, for what it is worth, is that while Tendulkar is and has been, indisputably, a truly great batsman, Lara played more truly great innings, when they really mattered, and I was privileged to watch my idea of the best of them all, in the third Test of the 1999 series against Australia at Kensington Oval, Barbados.
When West Indies were bowled out for 51 in the first innings of the first Test in Trinidad, Lara took most of the blame and when, the night before the start of the second Test in Jamaica, he was spotted in Kingston’s loudest nightclub, many commentators took great delight in pointing out it was called The Asylum.
Even after his double-hundred there had helped win the match and draw the four-match series 1-1, a proportion of the Barbados crowd booed when, on the penultimate evening of the third Test, Lara failed to appear as scheduled and a nightwatchman walked out instead.
Twenty-four hours later however, they were all cheering and cheering a match-winning innings kissed by genius, 153 not out.
That day Lara was too good for Australia and possibly too good for words. And to me, despite that early-morning phone call, that just about sums him up
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