Was Brian Lara's 400 not out a selfish innings?

Brian Lara bowed out of the game as one of the all-time greats. His career had its highs and lows, but he has always weathered the storm and came out a better player. His world record score of 400 not out in 2004 against England will forever be etched in the memories of cricket lovers around the world. Everyone knew he can bat for long period and doing so at the highest level is what Lara thrived on ever since he played First-Class cricket. His unbeaten 501 bares testimony to his temperament and his skills inculcated in him ever since he was a young boy, dreaming of representing his country at some point.
There were however many critics, claiming his knock of 400 not out as selfish. He was also accused of putting himself over his team. While there were people who believed that he wanted to reclaim the highest individual score in Tests, which Matthew Hayden had snatched away from him when he made 380 against Zimbabwe, just six months prior to Lara’s magical innings.

First it was the then Australia captain Ricky Ponting. One of the most successful skipper Ponting lashed out at Lara, mentioning that the Australians would never put individual records ahead of the team’s win.
“It’s hard to imagine an Australian player doing it,” Ponting told AAP.  ”It’s generally not the way we play our cricket. Their [West Indies] whole first innings might have been geared around one individual performance and they could have let a Test match slip because of it. They ran out of time in the game – that’s not the way the Australian team plays.”
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Matthew Hayden had [size=11pt]snatched away from him[/size]

when he made 380 against Zimbabwe : just six months prior ......


More importantly was Matthew Hayden selfish  :-\

[quote author=ketchim link=topic=103999.msg691795#msg691795 date=1462198696]
Matthew Hayden had [size=11pt]snatched away from him[/size]

when he made 380 against Zimbabwe : just six months prior ......


More importantly was Matthew Hayden selfish  :-\
[/quote]
It would be hard to argue otherwise. Perhaps Ponting forgot that that Hayden continued to bat after the tea break when he was 376* and had already broke Lara's record. That surely qualities as being selfish, no? I have no idea why he would carry on batting after tea other than to be the first batsman to score 400.

It is even more questionable when you consider the game situation - Zimbabwe were never going to score 700+ runs in their two innings and there was a threat of rain forecast for the last two days of play.

Up to that point in their Test history, Zimbabwe had surpassed 700 combined runs in a Test match only once - in Nagpur 2000.

One of the most selfish innings I can recall was Manoj Prabhakar's century against West Indies in the Willis World Series. West Indies posted 257. India finished on 211/5 in reply.

Prabhakar and Mongia came together with India needing 63 to win from the final nine overs. With plenty of wickets in hand, this should have been an exciting finish. However, instead of playing for the win, Prabhakar played for a century and the pair scored just 16 runs from those final nine overs. Incredible!

I know there are some that believe this game was fixed, and that certainly may well have been the case. It's hard to know whether Prabhakar was acting under instructions or whether he really did care more about getting a century than trying to win the match.

IIRC, both Prabhakar and Mongia were dropped for the rest of that tournament as punishment for their actions.

The most selfish I heard is Shiv Chanderpaul 

For batting at 5 and 6 positions

it was all about the 400

One big reason why I felt Lara's innings wasn't necessarily selfish is that the series was already over. England had thrashed West Indies in the first three Test matches with Windies averaging a paltry 182 per innings.

In the grand scheme of things, the series was already over and Lara continuing to bat ensured they avoided a 4-0 whitewash. Had this occurred in the second Test in the series, then you could make a stronger argument, but there really was nothing left to play for in this series.

Exactly, dillinger  !

now we can talk about advantage taking vs. Durham for the 500