To me, the best batsman of 90s/2000s. IMO, his batting performances against Aus in 2003 were qualitatively even better than his famed 1999 performances. In his first innings of the first Test in 2003, he scored a 26 with four square cuts that most batsmen would be proud of playing over their entire career (let alone playing them all in 1 brief innings). In the middle of Lara's innings, Steve Waugh was forced to place the Point fieldsman at the boundary. The first square cut off a 147Kph Brett Lee delivery (
@1:23 in the below video) was the shot that made me sit up. Although I had seen Lara bat several times before that, never really singled him out for extraordinary praise. But that particular shot (that too against Lee's pace in the first hour of the first day of Test match cricket) just left me gasping in utter disbelief. It was amazing how late he played the cut shot. And the bat-speed (or the arm-speed) was such that Lara actually cut it in front of square (it is awfully hard to do that off a 147 Kph delivery, against that much pace most batsmen almost invariably cut it behind square).
Lara's battles with Lee in the 2003 series, by his own admission bowling as fast as he had ever done in his career, made compelling watching. Lee using his express bouncers to get the attacking Lara in a tangle, while Lara responding with the
first ball square cut 6 over point in the Antigua Test and some brilliantly controlled hook/pull shots off 150 kph bouncers (again in front of square) in the Trinidad Test.
It is amazing how the great batsmen from West Indies played the high-risk game of fighting fire with fire even against the best, and yet have stats/figures every bit as good as their contemporaries who played it much safer.
Lillee, while rating Viv Richards as the best batsman he has bowled to, once wrote “For sheer ability to rip an attack apart, animal brutality and no fear in taking you on, I have to put Viv Richards on top of the list. I just loved bowling against the man. I enjoyed it because it was such a challenge and I regarded him as one of the supreme players if not the supreme player.” Same attitude could be told of Lara as well.