Being a cricket superstar from Trinidad certainly has its perks, but there are distinct disadvantages to being one of the greatest batsmen in the history of the sport and coming from a small island: everyone asks you for autographs, you probably get hit up for personal loans more often than you'd like, and sometimes people hold your relatives for ransom. That last one's especially troublesome, and it's exactly what happened to legendary cricketer Brian Lara. Lara's niece was abducted during an attempted carjacking in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad when thieves realized she might earn a hefty ransom. She was held for a week until Trinidadian police found the young woman tied up in a house this past Sunday, abandoned by her kidnappers, perhaps because such a high-profile abduction brought even more attention than they'd wanted in the first place.
Lara was out of the country for the whole ordeal. Trinidad, like many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, has a bit of kidnapping problem, with the abduction of Lara's niece being the seventh in the country in 2007.
