Video: Waqar Younis battles Brian Lara in one of the greatest overs in cricket history
Former cricketers Brian Lara and Waqar Younis are legends in every sense of the term. Lara’s batting mastery and Waqar’s exploits with the ball have elevated them to a status in the game that will always be hard to match for any player.
The two were pitted against each other a number of times when Pakistan and West Indies faced each other, and cricket fans were in for a treat on most occasions. The second Test between the two teams at Rawalpindi during West Indies tour of Pakistan in 1997 was no different as the duo were involved in one of the greatest overs in cricket history.
The Test marked the debut of speedster Shoaib Akhtar, but Waqar showed who the master really was by bowling out Lara with a toe-crushing delivery described by some as the ‘ball of the century’.
Batting first, the visitors were in a spot of bother at 37/2 and Lara decided to hit his way out of trouble by launching an astonishing counter-attack. He blocked the first delivery before scoring two astonishingly similar boundaries in the extra cover region – both through backfoot drives. He mistimed the next delivery but still earned two runs through the mid-off region, leading to the commentator stating that Lara was in ominous form.
Call it the commentator’s curse or just the sheer quality of the Pakistani legend, but it was Waqar who had the last laugh as he bowled an inswinging yorker that knocked out the leg stump and floored Lara – literally.
The wicket would have thrilled Waqar a lot; he claimed after his retirement that he cherished Lara’s wicket more than any other batsman’s.
“Brian Lara, Matthew Hayden, Steve Waugh and to an extent Sachin Tendulkar. They were all devastating. On a given day, they could be very dangerous. I cannot really pinpoint one batsman, but probably Lara stood out above the rest because he has scored a lot more against me than anyone else,” Waqar said, as reported by WisdenIndia.
Have a look at the entire over in the video below.