Brian Lara set his sights on a double century in front of his home crowd after overtaking Sir Garfield Sobers as the West Indies' highest century maker.
Lara reached his 27th Test ton on day one of the second Test against South Africa at Trinidad's Queen's Park Oval.
"My home crowd hasn't seen a double century from me yet, and that would be good," said Lara after hitting 159no.
"It was about the best I've felt coming into a Test here. I knew the team needed me and I'm quite happy with it."
As well as passing Sobers' 26 Test tons, Lara also leap-frogged Sunil Gavaskar (10,122) and Sachin Tendulkar (10,134) into third place in the all-time leading run-scorers in Test cricket.
Lara and six other West Indies players missed the drawn first Test in Georgetown because of a sponsorship contract row.
The incident cost Lara the captaincy, but he insists he has no problem with Shivnarine Chanderpaul taking over the role.
"It's probably the best decision in terms of where West Indies cricket is at the moment," Lara added.
"I love playing for the West Indies, and it doesn't matter to me who the captain is.
"Sometimes you can lean on the captaincy; now I've got to stay in the team by scoring runs."