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CERTAIN innings in Test cricket deserve to be recognised as great because of their nearness to perfection. A few others, like Brian Lara's double-century against Australia in Jamaica last week, have to be accorded the same rank because, in addition to being fine examples of batting, they have had an impact far beyond the boundary.

Among innings of such wider significance there has not been one like Lara's since 1992-93, when Mohammad Azharuddin made a match-winning 182 against England in Calcutta. India had just endured one of its fits of communal blood-letting, with hundreds of Muslims massacred. The healing done by Azharuddin, as the Muslim captain of the national team in a mainly Hindu country, cannot be quantified; but such communal violence has not happened since.

Defeating England also had a beneficial effect on West Indian cricket last winter, arresting the decline in the sport's quality and popularity there, but subsequently in South Africa their team went into free-fall. After the numerous humilations since Viv Richards retired unvanquished in 1991, the younger generation of West Indians could not have maintained their elders' interest in the game if their team had now capitulated to Australia.

Lara's innings therefore had this rare social and political dimension. Governments of the Anglophone Caribbean are trying to pull together to preserve some distance from the United States as it threatens their culture and banana industry; and cricket binds the West Indies more than anything else. Without cricket victorious, flamboyant, sensual cricket, played at best in the heat of inspiration - the islands could soon become poor Puerto Ricos.

Lara knows this all right: it was evident in his public pronouncements when he was made captain a year ago for the series against England. It is just that he hasn't been able to do much about it, as his batting has gone steadily backwards for almost five years, losing its discipline and patience since his two world records - the highest Test and first-class innings - in the first half of 1994.

Playing two seasons in England was the worst thing he could have done, the surfeit lulling him into sloppy habits, but Lara wanted his material rewards - rewards the West Indies are too poor to offer. He is a normal person blessed with an extraordinary talent and placed in the most demanding position in the region: similar to Gary Sobers, weaker than Frank Worrell, who embraced his destiny rather than toying with it as Lara had done until last week.

Courtney Walsh began the revival by bowling out Australia at a Sabina Park that is fair again (since the abandoned Test against England the pitch at least has been rolled, even if local heads have not). Walsh did not let his captain or the West Indian people down, as Lara had done when Walsh was captain. Then the West Indian top-order batting failed once more, and this time it was now or never: Lara was on his last chance from the West Indian selectors.

And - we can only conjecture - perhaps it was the very extremity of these circumstances which forced Lara to concentrate as he has not done for five often frivolous years. With total discipline, and the modesty which comes in maturity, Lara went back to the beginning and built brick by brick, every ball on its merit. His immediate reward is the captaincy for the remaining two Tests of the series.

The worst of many poor moves by the West Indian Board was to ban Desmond Haynes, in effect for the rest of his career, for turning up late for the domestic season. Had he stayed on, he would have taught the present openers not how to hit the new ball but how to leave it alone and how to use their feet, and he would have held one end while the cameo kids in the middle order came and went. In Haynes's absence Lara had to set a new example himself.

From this distance, on television, the Australians seemed less of a force than they were when Mark Taylor's gum-chewing jaw was the epicentre of their effort in the field. Captaincy has not affected Steve Waugh's batting, but the ball went through him in the field. He put on two change-bowlers together, conceding easy runs; his field-settings were conventional and he let things happen. On the basis of this Test at least, Ian Chappell was right again in advocating Shane Warne.

Even so, Lara's innings fell below perfection only when he did not re-adjust to the second new ball, by when West Indies were ahead though not out of sight, but for once he had earned the right to survive a reckless phase. For the strokeplay which preceded and followed was glorious in its command.

Off his own bat Lara, for the moment, arrested the decline in the quality and popularity of West Indian cricket. But he is nearer to recovering his former glory than the West Indian team are, as their top-order batsmen remain so poor, flourishing wrist-watches at the crease but little else. For the forseeable future, though, it will surely prove beyond one man, however heroic, to make West Indies supreme again.