FOR Brian Lara it was “the greatest experience I’ve ever had” - and he already had enough to fill a lifetime.
For West Indies cricket, it was a victory to unarguably rank alongside any, and above most, in their long and remarkable history.
For the joyous West Indians around the Antigua Recreation Ground - and, doubtless, further beyond - celebrating as no one else can, it was an incredible triumph that banished the gloom and doom that had enveloped them as one crushing loss had followed another in the series.
For the young players, and one or two not so young, who were responsible for it and who marked it with a lengthy assembly on the pitch afterwards, it was an incalculable boost to morale.
It led captain Lara to proclaim that they would not lose another Test for the year.
Statistically, yesterday’s win in the fourth and final Test, by three wickets over Australia, was Test cricket’s unlikeliest for no team in the game’s long history had ever scored as many as the West Indies’ 418 for seven to win,
Yet there was much more to it than that.
The West Indies, under a reinstated captain, with an interim coach and fielding the youngest team they have ever had, had been thoroughly trounced in the previous three Tests in which they had also been ravaged by injuries.
Even Lara himself did not extend his expectations beyond the draw that would avoid the first clean sweep of a Test series in the Caribbean by a visiting team.
It was a realistic and widely shared view for these Australians are the most powerful and intimidating opponents of the moment. They came intent on using every opportunity to avenge the misery piled on their predecessors by the mighty West Indies teams of the 1980s.
Although this had been the most competitive match of the series, with first innings scores even at 240, normal service seemed to have been resumed when Australia’s openers Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer started their second innings with a partnership of 242.
The West Indies fought back spiritedly on the third afternoon to bowl them out for 417, claiming all 20 wickets for the first time in the series, but the eventual target of 418 appeared too distant to contemplate.
In 136 years of Test cricket, only Don Bradman’s Australia, with 404 for three against England at Headingley in 1948, and India, with 406 for four against the West Indies in Port-of-Spain in 1976, had achieved a winning total of over 400.
But Lara, of all people, knows that records are there to be broken and a study of India’s 1976 Port-of-Spain scorecard convinced him that his team could do it.
“There was nothing great, no one got a double century, a couple of batsmen got hundreds and one got 80,” he said. “It was based on partnerships and that’s what we aimed for because we had six of our first seven batsmen who had Test hundreds and the pitch was still in good order.”
So true. The triumph was set up on the previous day by Ramnaresh Sarwan’s 105 and his successive stands of 91 with Lara and 123 with Shivnarine Chanderpaul.
In the end, it was consummated by another partnership, of 46 unbroken for the eighth wicket between Omari Banks, the tall, slim 20-year-old who is Anguilla’s first Test cricketer, and Vasbert Drakes, the 33-year-old veteran who only returned to West Indies cricket last year after seven years in self-imposed exile playing in South Africa and England.
Banks, whose inclusion in the squad at the start of the series was as calculated a gamble as selectors have taken for some time, had immediately displayed a ice-cool temperament on debut at Kensington Oval.
He confirmed it on the fourth afternoon as he supported Chanderpaul in a partnership of 83 that carried the West Indies into the last day 47 away from history.
His continuing role was to be second man to Chanderpaul when the two resumed their quest.
Before a boisterous crowd of over 6,000, the biggest of the match, divided between jumping, flag-waving West Indians and hundreds of visiting Australian fans, the balance shifted towards Australia off the first ball of Brett Lee’s third over of the day.
Delivered from round the wicket, it drew the left-handed Chanderpaul into a defensive stroke and found the edge on its way through to wicket-keeper Adam Gilchrist.
Chanderpaul added a single to his brilliant overnight 103 and his early exit seemed a match winning ticket for Australia. But they did not get another.
Banks started the day 28 and proceeded to provide Drakes with the same level-headed support he had done Chanderpaul.
Given the background, Drakes was in his sixth Test but he has accumulated more experience in his professional sojourns in high class cricket in other lands than those with five times as many Tests.
He read the situation and knew what he had to do. Australia captain Steve Waugh detected it from the moment he walked in.
“Drakes’ body language was pretty good and he came out and played shots from ball one,” Waugh said afterwards. “That was the best thing from the West Indies’ point of view. If he had come out and didn’t play shots, all the pressure would have gone on the batsmen. So he played a crucial role.”
Drakes’ clipped the first four, bisecting leg-side boundary fielders behind square off Lee and Banks followed with a cover-drive off Jason Gillespie for another.
The approach prompted Waugh to abandon his tactic of drying up the scoring with run-saving fields to the fast bowlers and turn to Stuart MacGill.
With the West Indies still needing 27, he replaced Lee after four overs from the pavilion end and summoned the leg-spinner. It proved a misguided risk.
MacGill had been plundered for 128 from 32 overs for the solitary, if major, wicket of Lara the day before and, once more, was seldom threatening.
Banks immediately cut him past second slip’s right hand for four before Drakes hoisted him onto the far distant roof of the Andy Roberts Stand at mid-wicket.
It was a gigantic blow that raised the 400 and further deflated an Australian team that, throughout the innings, showed unexpected vulnerability once under attack.
Waugh changed Gillespie for Glenn McGrath opposite MacGill but, apart from a few unsuccessful lbw appeals against Drakes on the long forward to MacGill, the pair neared the target with bold strokes, each greeted with wild scenes in the stands.
Drakes was lucky with a boundary off the inside edge from Gillespie but Banks’ glide off MacGill for another four was more authentic as the gap closed.
The deal was sealed 40 minutes before lunch when Drakes square-cut MacGill’s short leg-break to the cover boundary.
By then, the ground was already heaving in anticipation of the outcome and the shot set off typical West Indian revelry, at the same time dispelling the fear of a home whitewash, ending a sequence of 10 consecutive losses to Australia and entering a new record in the game’s annals.