The Picador Book of Cricket

by Ramachandra Guha

  At sixty-one – and there is no doubt about his age – Nayudu’s has to be one of the most remarkable innings in first-class cricket. If Botham seeks more challenges in later life, he would do well to surpass that in the year 2016.

  HUGH MCILVANNEY

  Black Is Bountiful (1985)

  It was a time for going against the tide. While more than 50,000 of the country’s most committed football supporters flooded towards one Old Trafford, magnetized by Manchester United’s leadership of the First Division, about 1,500 of us straggled willingly into the neighbouring premises of the same name to watch Lancashire and Somerset play a bit of cricket.

  Our choice, last Monday afternoon, was much less eccentric than it may have appeared. Vivian Richards was due to bat, and that is something he is capable of doing better than anyone else on the planet.

  The setting – spectators scattered in chilled, huddled handfuls around acres of seating under stubbornly threatening clouds – was scarcely calculated to galvanize the spirit. But greatness does not require a quorum. When he came to the crease, his juices were flowing and the tiny audience was treated to one of the most memorable experiences in the whole of contemporary sport: a bravura (i.e. characteristic) century by Viv Richards.

  It is unnecessary to report that many of the shots that took the recently appointed captain of West Indies beyond 100 for the sixth time this season (he scored a seventh century three days later to strengthen his position at the top of the batting averages) were breathtaking. Some of the eleven fours in his 120 clattered into the boards almost before the bowler’s arm had completed its motion and more than one of his five sixes soared away from a swing of the bat so fluid and flawlessly timed, so outrageously relaxed, that the power imparted seemed slightly eerie.

  Yet neither the glittering details of a single innings nor the cumulative wonders he has fed into the record books during the long decade of his pre-eminence in cricket can adequately explain the full effect that Richards at his best has on those fortunate enough to be on hand as witnesses.

  Of course, a dramatic physical presence is part of it. A man standing an inch under six feet and weighing upwards of thirteen stone might be expected to look bulkily, perhaps ponderously, solid, but in him grace is as basic as breathing. Just watching him walk slowly to the wicket can be more of a thrill than seeing other famous sportsmen at the height of their performances.

  His demeanour at such moments has been described as insouciant, but regal might be nearer the mark. The downward curve of the fine nose, the level gaze, the wide, expressive mouth within the handsome beard – all combine to indicate that if he ever went after the role of an emperor, the price of the second favourite at the audition would be 33–1 and drifting.

  Still, even when his looks, his sense of theatre and his dazzling technical brilliance are taken into account, the extent to which Richards can electrify his audiences, the way he can stir responses only rarely touched by sport, remains extraordinary. Maybe the best attempt we can make at identifying the extra factor involved is to suggest that he is a remarkable example of a man able to channel a great deal of a large and intense nature into the playing of a game.

  All great sportsmen, once in the arena, make statements about themselves but few achieve the eloquence, the vehemence or the depth of declaration that comes from Richards. When he is in action, you have the feeling that you are being addressed by a big spirit and had better pay attention.

  The potency of his aura certainly does not diminish at close quarters. One distinguished cricket writer admits to being enfeebled by extreme nervousness at the mere approach of Richards, even when the Antiguan’s mood is obviously benign. It’s not just that he exudes the kind of challenging strength that makes the contrived machismo of other athletes come across like the currency of a primary-school playground. His capacity to make those around him crave his approval is out of all proportion to his own remarkable prowess.

  When Ian Botham, with whom he has sustained a long and genuinely deep friendship rooted in mutual affection, admiration and spontaneous rapport, said that he did not seriously consider playing cricket in South Africa because he wouldn’t have been able to look Richards in the eye, the chances are that Botham was speaking literally.

  Richards does not vociferously condemn those who have been part of compromising expeditions to Mr Botha’s laager, insisting that each individual must answer to his own conscience. As West Indian captain, he has carefully stayed quiet on the Graham Gooch case and its threat to England’s winter tour of the islands, refusing to be drawn when his friend Lester Bird, the Antiguan Foreign Minister, articulated the possibility that Gooch’s attitudes would make him unacceptable as a tourist.

  The definite impression is that if last week’s avowal by Gooch of strong opposition to apartheid clears the way for the Essex man to visit the West Indies, that will please Richards, for it did not take the events of Thursday and Friday at the Oval [Gooch made 196 and David Gower 157 against Australia] to place Gooch and Gower at the head of his personal rankings of outstanding English batsmen. And when he and his team go into battle on their own turf, they don’t want any favours in the shape of weakened opposition.

  His consistent view is that cricketers who have been drawn from the rest of the world to entertain in South Africa, especially fellow West Indians who have yielded to the blandishments and financial lures, have been systematically ‘used’.

  ‘Knowing what the South Africans really think of our people, do you imagine they would offer us that sort of money if everything was right with them?’

  His face darkens and he shakes his head in dismissal of the ludicrous thought. Then, suddenly, the frown is swept away by an irresistible smile, the kind that might register on a light meter at a range of a hundred yards. ‘Of course, our talents are worth more than they could ever pay – but it’s not appreciation of our worth that makes them dangle that money in front of us.’

  The fact that his century on Monday was followed by a relentless drip of frustration in the field throughout Tuesday as Lancashire progressed to a comfortable victory might have made complications for an interviewer.

  But he was as courteous as he was fascinating and the ultimate effect on a scribbler with a fair amount of mileage on the clock was a profound sense of having been privileged to keep such company. Boxing, and a shared respect for the pride and dignity Joe Frazier brought to that rough old pursuit, gave us a good start.

  When I first toured India and Pakistan with the West Indies in 1974–5, I remember that in supporting Frazier against Ali I was outnumbered about 17–1 but I didn’t mind. Ali was great but Joe, with his big disadvantages in height and reach, had to be very brave and very special to do what he did. I believe in people who put all their heart into what they do and Joe was like that. I used to feel, ‘Here’s my man, going out to do a job, to give it his best shot.’ They might beat him but they could not break him.

  The empathy with Frazier, which has combined with a noticeable facial resemblance to give Richards a series of dressing-room nicknames that are variations of Smokin’ Joe, has a first-hand basis. In his teens Richards boxed for his neighbourhood in St John’s, Antigua, competing with boys from surrounding districts.

  ‘I still spar a lot at the local gym when I go home to Antigua. It gets rid of my frustrations and it helps me to keep fit. I swim too. We have a lot of wonderful beaches. I hate jogging or running for miles, so I like to swim or go to the gym. I believe in burning up the little bit of energy I do possess. Hitting the heavy bag is comforting.’

  His aggression has not always found such innocuous outlets. As a young footballer (he actually preferred that game until an ultimatum from a Leeward Islands cricket official abruptly clarified his thinking) his rumbustious activities in the back four caused him to be known as The Bull.

  ‘I was inclined to take things into my own hands, to go for a little bit of physical stuff,’ he says, grinning at the memory. Looking across at the relaxed sp
rawl of his wide-shouldered body, in which what he calls his beef is kept hard and flexible by a daily programme of exercise that includes about seventy sit-ups and forty press-ups, it was easy to sympathize with The Bull’s opponents.

  At that moment, dressed in the whites that always heighten his glow of fitness, with an unextravagant glint of gold on one finger of his right hand, at the wrist and at his neck, he was the picture of a successful young athlete at ease with the world. But his fierce pride in himself and his people can release an element in his personality that is positively volcanic.

  ‘I don’t stand rubbish from no one,’ he said quietly on Tuesday.

  A man has to approach me the right way, then I think I can be fair and decent to anybody. But don’t come and put rubbish on me, man. I won’t stand that shit from no one. I have lost my cool on numerous occasions and I haven’t always regretted it. I was not sorry for what I did on the last West Indies tour of Australia.

  There was a bad taste about that series. People like Geoff Lawson were behaving like school kids. There were racist remarks and some of our guys were badly hurt. It couldn’t go on. Eventually Allan Border was involved and Graeme Wood and Steve Rixon, though Geoff Lawson was at the centre of it. In the last Test at Sydney in January somebody said something to me and I totally went wild. I said, ‘No use we talk about it here in the game. After the match we can sort this out.’

  I was waving and making a lot of rude gestures and some nasty words came out. I took plenty of stick from the Australian crowd and the press but I felt better afterwards. I had to make them aware that we are not idiots. The trouble was serious. We were just waiting for one Australian to get out of hand again and everything would have turned loose. That’s how bad the guys felt.

  His anger then was thoroughly understandable, but less explosive natures are alarmed by the scale of the rage that can be detonated by the conviction that he has been given out unjustly. It led to him being banned for two years as a teenager in Antigua and while on tour in India as vice-captain of West Indies in 1983 what he did to a dressing room instantly became a legend.

  ‘I didn’t get any runs in the first match and I wanted desperately to do much better in New Delhi,’ he recalled. ‘I was going really well until this ridiculous decision put me out. When I got back to the dressing room all the lunches were laid out and I chucked the bat and the first pot it hit had curried mutton in it, or something like that. All hell turned loose.’

  In spite of the serious implications that attended the outburst, he cannot remain solemn when he remembers the curry-splattered scene. The rich voice breaks into a staccato laugh.

  However, there is no doubt that captaincy of his country will make him more than ever determined to offer the right example in vital areas.

  I always want to behave the way a man should, not to do anything cheap. It is true that in the West Indies you’re expected to be more than just an exceptional player. You’re expected to present yourself in a particular way, the way you have known since you were a kid in the islands, with the natural panache that means so much in a place where the cricket is so important.

  His people, he convinces you, could never settle for any mathematical representation of greatness in a cricketer. True heroes like Sobers and Worrell had to fill the mind with glorious memories. The Richards career, brimming though it is with stunning statistics, will surely survive in the end as a parade of unforgettable images.

  He has his own varied pantheon of heroes, from Nelson Mandela to Frank Worrell to Bob Marley, and he is as loyal to the ideals they embody for him as he is to those nearer to his everyday experience who have an affinity with the emotional essence of his nature.

  Botham is one, and another was Peter McCombe from Airdrie, who befriended Richards in the lonely early days at Somerset and had become as trusted as a brother by the time he died of a heart attack in Antigua last year.

  Richards says he would never disown a friend and will certainly never turn his back on the many men who grew up with him and are now Rastafarians. ‘These people are a lot cleaner in their hearts than most who criticize them, and they are and always will be part of me. I believe totally in a friend.’

  He believes also in his obligations to the mass of ordinary West Indians in this country. ‘So many of them work in lowly jobs and when we do well on the field they can walk a little taller, and hold their heads up. Whether I’m batting, bowling or fielding, I cannot feel satisfied unless I give every ounce to try and make them proud of me.’

  For some time the wonderful eyes that he reveres as the greatest of his God-given gifts have been susceptible to inflammation from a condition akin to cataracts. He bathes them religiously with an assortment of lotions and balms to keep the problem in check.

  Vivian Richards, now thirty-three, long ago realized that he had to do a great deal more than look out for himself and his family.

  ⋆ ⋆ ⋆

  For all the strides taken by India and Pakistan in the 1970s and ’80s, it was the West Indies who won Tests most often and most convincingly. They also carried off the first two World Cups. They were led by Clive Lloyd, whose bent frame and thick glasses concealed a strokemaker of savage power and a captain with a Bradmanesque will to win. His formula for success was simple – the batsmen hit hard and the bowlers bowled fast.

  With these methods the West Indians defeated all comers, but England more often than the others. Frank Keating now writes of the man who is commonly held to be the greatest of all West Indian fast bowlers, Malcolm Marshall. I note with interest that he has chosen not a ‘blackwash’ of poor England but, rather, Marshall’s demolition of some fellow West Indians in a Shell Shield match.

  FRANK KEATING

  Marshall Arts (1986)

  ‘Macho’. The nickname seems sinisterly apt. For, to be sure, out there on the cricket field Malcolm Marshall’s machismo is at full throttle as he looks to prove his virility by violent domination. He goes about his work with a cold-eyed, businesslike, unsmiling, scary relish. He seems in a hurry to hurt. It is one thing to be acknowledged by all opposition batsmen as the fastest in the world, quite a different kettle of cower to be the most dangerously lethal. Test batsmen have genuine nightmares about Marshall these days – only their wives wake up with worse sweats.

  Suddenly, like a revelation, the game is won or lost and Marshall’s features crease in a crow’s-feet network of laugh lines. He is much liked around cricket’s dressing rooms. People enjoy hanging their hat on the peg next to his. For one thing he whistles only the most cheerful reggae tunes. He is a whole-hearted, keen and confident comrade.

  On Monday, in his home-town pavilion at Bridgetown, his infectiously giggling delight bubbled all over as he cuddled, and was cuddled by, his Barbados captain Joel Garner after the two of them had laid Jamaica to waste to bring back the Shell Shield to mighty little Barbados. The Colgate-smiling, hand-slapping glee went on for an hour or so and, of a sudden, the nickname Macho had become convivial, endearing and totally untense. Just as the gold chain around his neck with his name on the pendant did not look half so, well, macho, or not as dangerous as it does when it glints ominously like a hired assassin’s gun in the sun – or does when he turns from his mark to scud in on his toes with that short sprinter’s hostility and that cruel and nasty narrowness to his eyes.

  His loins girded with only a towel, Marshall looks almost ludicrously small-boned and slight; certainly he looks more of a spinner with cunning than a devilish and upsetting fast bowler. Botham calls him the ‘skinny wimp’. When you talk to him, even my plump 5 ft 11 in tower over him by at least an inch. To Wes Hall’s Larry Holmes, Charlie Griffith’s Frazier, Michael Holding’s Muhammad, Colin Croft’s Foreman, and Garner’s, say, Carnera, he looks as small, tiny, loose and angelic as Sugar Ray Leonard at 160 lb. It is dotty to believe that Malcolm Marshall is less than two stone heavier than Barry McGuigan.

  For all that, mind you, Marshall is in the whippy physical image of other legends of the f
ast ball – Martindale, Constantine, Gilchrist and that long-ago founder of the faith and man of the people George John, from some sixty years ago, who was but 5 ft 9 in and, as C. L. R. James said: ‘All power is in proportion . . . pace and body action, he hits many a poor batsman on the inside of the knee to collapse them like a felled ox.’ This new welterweight is even lighter. Marshall’s half-dozen summers so far with Hampshire have delighted him to make it his second home. But in truth Bournemouth’s balmy breezes and corporation-imported palm trees patently cannot match his very nature’s affinity with the bold primary colours and jangling, carefree good cheer of Barbados.

  ‘Malcolm’s real strength’, said his captain Garner above the hubbub of Monday evening, ‘is that he has never given less than 110 per cent for any side he has ever played for – from school, club, Barbados, Hampshire or with us fellows in the West Indian team. Pulling his weight for the side just means everything to him.’ Garner and Marshall slapped hands in a last and poignant intimacy that we hangers-on had no business to dare even understand. On Monday evening they would meet later, sure, for celebration drinks, a little music and much more laughter, but the team was off from the airport first thing in the morning to prepare for this weekend’s lap of honour in Guyana so they would, they promised themselves, be early abed.

  Now, nattily, crisply and casually dressed, Marshall eases through the throng to rev up his sleek car and go home, perhaps for another change of clothing, for organizing the evening. He revs up at the first traffic light. His countrymen recognize their silky bachelor-boy hero, and shout, ‘Hey, Macho, you showed ’em!’ or ‘You lightnin’ man, Macho,’ and there was not the slightest tremor of resentment that his cricket was building him one of the loveliest homes on the island.