On this day: Lara's masterclass

It was on this day 16 years ago that Brian Lara penned one of the most memorable chapters of his storied cricket career – against a powerless Australian attack at the heaving Recreation Ground in Antigua. Andrew Ramsey, senior writer with cricket.com.au was there to witness it and recorded it in his book 'The Wrong Line'.

The tiny Antigua Recreation Ground served as the spiritual home of Calypso cricket in the days when the West Indies were a world force.

Its very location affirmed its non-denominational appeal – a short stroll from the sleepy commercial heart of St John's, past the imposing grey stone edifice of the nineteenth-century Anglican cathedral, skirting the official home and office of the Governor-General, and the last stop heading east before Her Majesty's Prison.

Its amalgam of whitewashed concrete walls and bare steel and timber grandstands only highlighted the fact that the soul of a cricket ground can transcend the sum of its graceless parts.

It held scarcely 10,000 people, but when fully packed it pulsed with a passion that left the world's mega-stadia looking decidedly soulless.

It was like no other cricket venue on the planet – part open-air nightclub, part house of worship.

The prospect of the home team wresting back the Frank Worrell Trophy after being brutalised in the opening Test of the 1999 series meant the ground was beyond bursting for the decider.

Even though it was Easter weekend in a traditionally God-fearing community, the party was in full swing along the narrow walkways separating the terraces from the perimeter walls before a ball was bowled.

Heavyset women sat on upturned milk crates, crouched over huge pots that bubbled with goat curry. Hotplates billowed aromatic smoke as the early morning jerk chicken or shark and bake customers queued.

And the pick-up trucks that made the slow crawl to the heavy steel entrance gates on Factory Road unloaded groups of fans who lugged in enormous cooler boxes stacked with bottled beer, rum punch, and all manner of other grog that screamed 'late afternoon security problem'.

Reggae music blasted – at a volume that demanded its own health warning – from the soaring speaker stacks of 'Chickie's Disco', as much a landmark in the Double Decker Stand as Old Father Time perched above Lord's.

In the sweaty catacombs under the elevated western concourses, staff dispensed cold drinks and lukewarm rotis, stopping only to strain for a glimpse of the players through the louvred windows above them that opened out at ground level.

Almost to a person – hard partying Australian tour groups and objective journalists included – the crowd buzzed with the expectation of another virtuoso performance from Lara, who had peeled off match-winning centuries in each of the previous two Tests.

And none of us was left short-changed.

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The raw statistics of Lara's sublime second-day hundred, reached off just eighty two balls, tell a suitably compelling tale.

But the drama compacted into that 101-minute innings sustains the memory of all who lived it.

As Lara ambled on to the ground midway through Easter Sunday afternoon, his slightly knock-kneed gait giving him the misleading appearance of a small boy kitted out in too-big protective equipment, customers vacated the bars and food stalls to take up any spare vantage points.

Many of the venue staff followed them.

Despite being in the form of his life, Lara took a dozen deliveries to score his first runs.

He should have been dismissed twice in the space of a single over having reached fourteen, but was spared by the ineptitude of Australia's fielders who turfed a catch and botched a run-out.

Or perhaps they secretly also wanted to see him flaunt his genius one more time.

Whatever the truth, they deserved thanks rather than ridicule. Because, for the next hour, Lara conducted a master class as ruthless as it was flawless.

No matter how Australia's hapless bowlers attacked him, or where Australian captain Stephen Waugh deployed his fielders, Lara simply hit the ball wherever he wanted, often times even further.

In doing so, he lifted the congregation to the cusp of exalted delirium.

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Lara's extravagant back-lift always gave the erroneous impression that he premeditated his strokes, or that he aimed a glory shot at every ball that came along. But like a matador's estoque beneath a billowing cape, the flourish helped to mask the menace.

He would dip into a slight crouch as the bowler delivered, as if drawing reserves of power from the very pit of his being, then channel that power into the moment bat met ball.

It was at that point of contact that he seemed to have at least three shots in his repertoire to achieve the optimum outcome.

His ability to subtly transfer his body weight, flex his wrists and angle his blade at the last conceivable instant meant a delivery of full length around off stump could be stroked either through extra cover, squeezed through point, or deflected to third man depending on where the fielders weren't.

On this day, once he got into his stride, every choice was unerring.

And while it ultimately didn't define the outcome of the Test – which Australia won comfortably - or the series (which was drawn enabling the tourists to retain the Worrell Trophy) it remains a defining innings of his generation's most enthralling and entertaining batsman.

This is an edited extract from 'The Wrong Line' by Andrew Ramsey published by ABC Books and which is available in paperback or e-book through the ABC Shop