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``No short-leg?'' Geoff Boycott asked on the first day of the Fifth Test at Centurion Park with the home team struggling on 280 for eight and Walsh bowling the new ball to Allan Donald. ``Extraordinary captaincy!''

A year earlier, the exclamation would not have been suffused with sarcasm. But in South Africa I can remember no commentator even remarking on the insightful unorthodoxly that had always characterised Lara's captaincy. Instead, the opposite was true as he often conceded terrain where aggression was likely to be more successful.

One psychologist theorises that, insightful as ever, Lara perceived in the course of the Limited-overs tournament in Bangladesh that preceded the tour, that his young team would be no match for the supremely professional outfit that the South Africans had become. And it was that anxiety crisis that led to the showdown with the WICB and his apparent loss of form.

But it was more than form that went. Tony Cozier described the normally zesty captain as ``a sad and forlorn figure'' towards the end of the tour.

Things might have got worse after the mauling at Queen's Park. But three things had happened quietly. Forgetting old resentments and finding a new humility within himself, Lara had approached Cozier for advice. and, high in the stands at the Newlands Ground in Cape Town, the pair had talked for an hour about ``the state of West Indies cricket''.

The second was that the WICB had attached a psychologist to the team and he had evidently started at the head.

And finally to the psychologist carrot had come the baton of a two-match probation. Shape up, the Board had told him publicly, or you're history.

At Sabina, he shaped up and made history.

His magnificent double century at Sabina haul his team, his country and himself back from the verge of oblivion.

Then at Kensington, the Prince of Port of Spain seemed to underline the durability of the transformation by scoring an unparalleled-and almost unprecedented-second innings century to give the West Indians a totally unforeseen and totally unforeseeable-2-1 advantage in the series.

One English writer compared him to Bradman.

It might have been, hindsight suggests, designed to induce a false sense of security in the soon-to-be-30-year-old captain who is known to make a habit of reading any and everything written about his cricket.

And going largely uncountered by more realistic down-to-earth assessments that anchored the shimmering present in the relatively recent unglorious past, it might have gone to his head.

At Kensington when the situation demanded unspectacular protracted occupation, he offered pyrotechnics-and paid the price. Australia tightened the screws and retained the trophy.

But Lara has at least managed to vindicate Tim Hector's unshaken conviction that at the core there is steel. And he is indeed one of those individuals who, perceiving his and our predicament, as the Trinidad and Tobago Review writes, ``dig deep within themselves to find the wherewithal to lead because they accept that their own pre-eminence gives than that responsibility''.

But the last word comes from Cozier.

``It is principally up to him to ensure that it isn't temporary.''

And if he does, there can be no doubt that soon the whole West Indian community will demand that his application for a place in the pantheon be stamped, in bold purple, ``Approved''.