PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad – Former champion West Indies batsman Brian Lara has urged officials to ensure the stadium named in his honour at Tarouba, South Trinidad, does not become a "white elephant".

The batting legend was speaking after officially touring the Brian Lara Stadium on Tuesday.

Lara was accompanied to the venue by Minister of Sport Gary Hunt, who said he did not have a time-line as to when the TT$500 million
(BDS$158.00 million) venue would be ready.

The venue should have been used for World Cup warm-up matches but contractors could not make the deadline.

This time around, project manager Caulder Hart is saying that the stadium will be ready by July this year.

Lara hopes the project, when completed, will be a considerable boost to sports development.

"This is part of the dream, part of the discussion I had with the Prime Minister in 2004 when I scored 400 runs, and I am hoping that we get something that will benefit young sportsmen in the country.

"Not just cricket, but to see every young sportsmen have an opportunity with an academy of any sport to enhance us for many years to come. We have had to wait but that's not important to me, what is important is that we get a quality facility."

Lara expressed the hope that the finished stadium will not become a white elephant like so many other stadiums in the country that are underutilised.

"We just got to pray that we got a facility that is not a white elephant, something after it is up and running, we don't have anything happening."

Lara said he had discussed with Prime Minister Patrick Manning the desire to see a lot of coaching and training at this venue.

"I want to see 15 to 20 practice matches, audio visual rooms, things like that, that's going to help young cricketers not just for us to come and enjoy ourselves in the party stands and have an occasional international match.

"I want to see this facility used day in, day out," Lara said.

Lara retired from international cricket following the 2007 Cricket World Cup.

He holds the world record for highest scores in Test (400 not out) and first-class (501 not out) cricket and has the highest all-time aggregate in Test cricket of 11 953 runs, with 34 centuries. (CMC)