WATCH: Brian Lara's shocking revelation on dark side of breaking records

The former West Indies captain, Brian Lara, has made a shocking revelation on how breaking the world record twice in his career took a lot out of him and gave him several stress periods. During his recent interaction on ‘The Overlap cricket,’ the southpaw spoke on the night when Matthew Hayden broke his record of 375

‘I wasn’t annoyed. I was asleep in Jamaica. And my agent called me, and he was in London. He said you need to have a number for you to call. I said why because I think he did a lot on that day. So, he might have gone to sleep at 1:00 something, and then he scored a couple of hundreds on that day.’ Lara talked on the show.

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Hayden smashed 380 runs at the WACA against Zimbabwe in 2003, which came nine years after Lara built the record of the highest individual Test score of 375 against England at St John's. Before that, the previous highest score by an individual batter was unbeaten 365 runs by Garry Sobers in 1958 against Pakistan at the Sabina Park.

Watch: Brian Lara reveals how breaking records put stress on him

Lara looked back at the night when he called Hayden and congratulated him on the record. ‘So, he had a number to call the Perth dressing room. But I said Why? He said that someone broke your record. I called the dressing room, and it was very noisy. I went to Matthew and congratulated him. But funny enough, I felt that for those 10 years, I had a lot of stress because of those two records.’

"The records caused me stress" 😰

Brian Lara on the pressure of being cricket’s record-breaker 📚 pic.twitter.com/CbLnqT596S

— Stick to Cricket (@StickToCricket) July 15, 2025

‘And one of my main things was actually to be a good captain and not to have strangled myself with the double world record. I wasn’t perturbed and didn’t worry much about it, but here came England 10 years later.’ The 56-year-old added during the same session.

However, Hayden’s 380 didn’t last long. Just six months later in 2004, at the same ground, St John’s Park, Lara became the first and the only batter as of now to celebrate 400 runs individually. That 400* is still the highest score by a batter in the longest format, coincidentally, along with the ground, it also came against England. The only difference was the opposition captains.