Records
Lara struck 277 runs against Australia in Sydney, his maiden Test century, the fourth-highest maiden Test century by any batsman, the highest individual score in all Tests between the two teams and the fourth-highest century ever recorded against Australia by any Test batsman.
He became the first man to score seven centuries in eight first-class innings, the first being the record 375 against England and the last being the record 501 not out against Durham.
After Matthew Hayden had eclipsed his Test record for highest individual score 375 by five runs in 2003, he reclaimed the record scoring 400 not out in 2004 against England. With these innings he became the second player to score two Test triple-centuries, the first & only player to score two 350-plus scores in test history, the second player to score two career quadruple-centuries after Bill Ponsford, the only player to achieve both these milestones, and regained the distinction of being the holder of both the record first-class individual innings and the record Test individual innings. He is the only player to break the world record twice.
He also set the record for the highest individual test score as captain (400*)
In the same innings, he became the second batsman to score 1,000 Test runs in five different years, four days after Matthew Hayden first set the record.
He was the all-time leading run scorer in Test cricket, a record he attained on 26 November 2005 until surpassed by Sachin Tendulkar on 17 October 2008.
He was the fastest batsman to score 10,000 (with Sachin Tendulkar) and 11,000 Test runs, in terms of number of innings.
He scored 34 Test centuries; joint-sixth along with Sunil Gavaskar, Mahela Jayawardene and Younis Khan on the all-time list behind Sachin Tendulkar (51), Jacques Kallis (45), Ricky Ponting (41), Kumar Sangakkara (38) and Rahul Dravid (36).
He has the most centuries for a West Indian
Nine of his centuries are double-centuries (surpassed only by Kumar Sangakkara and Donald Bradman)
Two of them are triple-centuries (matched by Australia's Donald Bradman, India's Virender Sehwag, and West Indies' Chris Gayle).
He has scored centuries against all Test-playing nations. He achieved this feat in 2005 by scoring his first Test century against Pakistan at the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown, Barbados.
He became the sixth batsman to score a century in one session, doing so against Pakistan on 21 November 2006.
Lara has scored 20% of his team runs, a feat surpassed only by Bradman (23%) and George Headley (21%). Lara scored 688 runs (42% of team output, a record for a series of three or more Tests, and the second-highest aggregate runs in history for a three-Test series) in the 2001–02 tour of Sri Lanka.
He also scored a century and a double-century in the third Test in that same Sri Lanka tour, a feat repeated only five other times in Test cricket history.
He has scored the most runs (351) on a losing team in a Test.
He scored the largest proportion (53.83%) of his team's total runs in a Test when he made 221 and 130 against Sri Lanka at Colombo in 2001. The previous Test record stood at 51.88% and was achieved by Jimmy Sinclair.
Lara holds the world record of scoring most runs in a single over (28 runs against left-arm spinner RJ Peterson of South Africa) in Test cricket. He also scored 26 runs in a single over off the bowling of Danish Kaneria at Multan Cricket Stadium on 21 November 2006.
He scored the ninth-fastest Test century, doing so off 77 balls against Pakistan on 21 November 2006.
With 164 catches, he is the eighth-highest all-time catch-taker of non-wicketkeepers, behind Rahul Dravid, Mahela Jayawardene, Jacques Kallis, Ricky Ponting, Mark Waugh, Stephen Fleming and Graeme Smith.
In 1994, he was awarded the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Overseas Personality Award. In 1995, he was chosen as one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year.
Lara had played some of his best innings in the latter stage of his career. Wisden published a top 100 list in July 2001, a distillation of the best performances from 1,552 Tests, 54,494 innings and 29,730 bowling performances. Three innings by Lara were placed in the top 15 (the most for any batsman in that range). His 153 not out in Bridgetown, Barbados, during West Indies' 2–2 home series draw against Australia in *1998–1999 was deemed the second-greatest Test innings ever played, behind Bradman's 270 against England in the Third Test of the 1936–1937 series at Melbourne.
He was voted as second-scariest batsman to face in the "World's Scariest Batsman" poll of international bowlers.
