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Published: Sunday | April 24, 2005

NO ATHLETE has ever given me more pleasure than Brian Charles Lara. Whatever his off the field shenanigans ­ and he is far more of a gentlemanly role model than say Viv Richards ever was ­ at the crease, the man is an endless fount of joy. Just as cricket is easily the most aesthetically pleasing of sports, so is Lara far and away the most attractive batsman I have seen. Lawrence Rowe might have been a touch more graceful, but BCL is much nimbler and more athletic. And he has played many more memorable innings than Yagga.

When Lara is in full flow, as he was on Thursday, he comes as near to being an artist as any sportsman ever has. The precise footwork, the flowing backlift, the perfect timing, and the sublime placement all bring to mind the controlled grace of a ballet dancer. And ballet dancers don't do it while facing 90 mile per hour missiles.

Yet even Lara's artistry takes second place to his grit. No one in modern times has single-handedly rescued his team on so many occasions. When Wisden Cricinfo looked at batsmen's contributions to team totals, the 1930s Don Bradman and George Headley topped the list. And to quote "In third place is another batsman who has waged many a lone battle for his side: Brian Lara has scored nearly a fifth of the West Indian runs." With this region's pathetic administration at all levels, it's likely a 50/50 proposition as to whether the West Indies will still be a test class nation in 10 years. But if Windies cricket dies, it won't be Brian Lara's fault. Without him it probably would have ceased to be by now.

YOUR BEST AT CRITICAL MOMENTS

Spectators often regard athletes as physically gifted but intellectually limited 'dumb brutes'. But I personally marvel at Lara's mental toughness. Hand eye coordination and nimble feet are one thing. But the ability to concentrate so single-mindedly and produce your best at critical moments when all your teammates are crumbling about you, well I take off my hat to Sir Brian. I know I don't possess that kind of intestinal fortitude.

Politics is another arena which puts a premium on performing at your best at critical moments. And on the same day that Brian Lara smashed his brilliant 175 that rescued the Windies yet again, Bruce Golding resurrected his political career with the best budget speech I have ever heard. He managed to be substantive without being boring, tough but not confrontational, and humorous yet not frivolous.

Frankly, I didn't know the man had it in him. I expected the same kind of plodding, jargon-filled and numbingly detailed performance he normally gives ­ though to be fair, few of our politicians are electrifying public speakers. Only Audley Shaw has a knack for exciting audiences, but often gets carried away and sacrifices intellectual credibility for emotional effect.

GOOD SPEECH

Mr. Golding's speech was the kind I think most Jamaicans have been dying to hear. It sets a new bar for all our politicians, including Mr. Golding himself, and it gave his credibility an immense boost. After his recent 'bangarang' and 'Nazi camp wire fence' comments, many were beginning to wonder if Bruce 'lick him head'. But no one can deny that his budget speech was 'new and different' in the best sense of the term.

Whether this filters down to the masses is another thing. It's mostly political junkies and media hounds who listen to budget speeches. When I asked my staff if anyone they knew had any interest in them, they all shook their heads.

And when it came to the most critical issue facing the country ­ crime ­ Mr. Golding and for that fact, Security Minister Dr. Peter Phillips, both missed the boat. Nowhere did either address what is undoubtedly a critical failing in our present approach to fighting crime, namely Jamaica's under-imprisonment. Simply put, we have far too low a prison capacity for a country with our levels of violent crime.

Even the most basic statistics show this. We have had over 13,000 murders in 15 years. If even one third of these murders resulted in convictions that would mean 4,333 persons sentenced to life, yet our total prison capacity is only 4,000. When you consider the number of armed robbery and rape convictions, well as they say, do the math. And we haven't even considered lesser crimes like manslaughter and embezzlement and petty theft. No wonder police complain about revolving-doors prisons where repeat offenders are repeatedly released early to make room for more recent convicts.

The U.S.A. is living proof that longer mandatory sentences and 'three strikes you're out' laws ­ meaning a third conviction results in life imprisonment ­ can significantly reduce violent crime. But of course you have to put all these convicts somewhere. Which is why the number of persons behind bars in the U.S.A. rose from 500,000 in 1980 to 1,000,000 in 1990 to 2,000,000 in 2000. But the 'keep repeat offenders behind bars' strategy worked. The U.S. murder rate halved between 1990 and 2000.

PRISON POPULATION

Jamaica's prison population has remained the same for over 30 years. I recently read ­ I'm not sure how true it is but it must go close to so ­ that we haven't built a new prison since independence. A comparison even to our West Indian neighbours shows something is wrong. Trinidad and Barbados both have much lower murder rates but roughly twice as high incarceration rates as Jamaica. The U.S.A.'s is over four times as great as ours. Surely such figures will convince even the most bleeding hearts of liberals that we simply are not keeping enough repeat offenders behind bars long enough.

Not that this is a magic solution nor the only thing we need to do. But it is indisputably an indispensable part of the crime solution puzzle which none of our politicians want to acknowledge. And we all know what happens to ostriches who stick their head in the sand when danger approaches ­ they get eaten by lions.