Tim Tremlett bowled the first ball after tea and Viv made as if to block but then, almost imperceptibly, followed through on his forward defensive shot. The ball disappeared over the sightscreen, out of the ground and across the road. We all looked at each other and thought, ‘Ah, here we go!’ And there we went. Glamorgan needed more than 200 in the session and he just murdered us. It was fantastic to watch, up to a point.
Fast forward. With one over of the match left, Viv was 150 not out. They needed 14 to win and the greatest fast bowler in the world was bowling to the greatest batsman in the world.
The Welsh were 7 down now and Colin Metson was in. So I said to Malcolm, ‘With all of us on the fence, Viv gets a single and you have five balls at Metson and the rest, who can’t bat. We might even win.’ So Maco ran in and bowled a good length ball on off stump. Viv blistered it through cover for four. Our two quickest fielders were at deep point and deep extra cover. Neither moved. I’m thinking, ‘That should have been a single, Maco.’ ‘Maco,’ I screamed from long off, ‘give Viv a friggin’ single!’ Next ball, Maco bowled a quick bouncer and Viv hit it over the flats. We never saw the ball again, ever.
So I moved in from the boundary and said, ‘Give him a fucking single, bowl him a yorker and you’ve got three balls at Metson!’ So the very great Malcolm Marshall ran in and bowled a good full ball—not quite a yorker, though—and Viv dug it out and drilled it wide of mid-on towards the boundary, scorching the turf in the process. Before it crossed the line, he took his gloves off and ran towards me to shake my hand and say, ‘That was one helluva declaration, skipper, let’s go drink some beers.’ He was 164 not out. It was one hell of an innings, Viv.
‘As if he’d have taken the single anyway,’ said Maco in the bar at ten o’clock that night.
And another thing . . .
Swansea, three years later. Marshall to Richards. It was still Marshall to Richards. Malcolm runs in and Viv pulls away at the very last moment. There’s a hush. On the field we’re all looking at each other. No one dares say anything. ‘Hey!’ screams Viv, now marching down the pitch, past Marshall and on, past the umpire. ‘YOU!’ Nothing, bar a horrified look on a few nearby spectators. ‘That’s YOU!’ Now Viv’s pointing to a spot just above the sightscreen, pointing to a man who is sitting on his own, flicking through the pages of his newspaper. ‘That’s right, YOU!’ The man looks up from his broadsheet, startled, and points to himself like, ‘What, me?’ ‘Yes, YOU!!! You’ve got David Gower and Robin Smith at slip,’ screams Viv, ‘and you’ve got Malcolm Marshall, the greatest fast bowler in the world, bowling to Vivian Richards . . . And you’re reading the fucking newspaper?!’ Priceless.
I asked him the same question I asked Bradman: is there a secret? ‘Keep it simple, head still, watch the ball,’ he said. ‘These fellas these days want to over-complicate this thing which is batting. Come forward, come at the face of the man who challenges you, show him who’s boss, then spring back if you must. Be the boss, because if you don’t think you are, no one else will.’
WHO IS SECOND BEST?
This chapter on batting has not turned out quite as planned. Talk of the distance between Bradman and others such as Richards makes me wonder who the best is after Bradman. The first thing to say is that I have no more idea than the next man, but it makes a good yarn and something that mates and I have debated over many years. Had Bradman not averaged 99.94—say it was 59.94—we would judge him alongside everyone else. There would be arguments for substance and for style and, again, they would be entirely subjective. There is no wrong or right, just opinion. Unless it is Bradman, of course, then the bets are off.
Figures have to feature in the criteria because they are the one constant but these alter with time, laws, equipment, opponents and conditions. Comparing W.G. Grace, Victor Trumper or Ranjitsinhji with Kevin Pietersen, A.B. de Villiers or Virat Kohli is nonsense—other than to say they all liked, or like, a dash. Grace could impose, Trumper could invent and Ranji could improvise. Today’s batsmen have such attributes as their starting point. Certainly, our man must bat in a fashion that wins matches for his team. Runs themselves are a necessity. Runs made when specifically needed, or in difficult circumstances, assume much greater value. How do we measure this? We can’t, not through the ages anyway. Some form of Money-ball algorithm might soon separate the modern players, but, thankfully, the many misty years that have seen cricket evolve from a game of top hats, curved bats and underarm bowling to the kaleidoscope it has become today prevent us from too much forensic exploration. Anyway, there is a romance to cricket that should be preserved. We can compare and contrast but we should not judge. The sensational achievements of W.G. in his time have to sit alongside anything A.B. achieves in his.
The Wisden Almanack provides us with the records—a good starting point. At the time of writing both Steve Smith and Adam Voges average more than 60 but of those whose careers are past only George Headley, Graeme Pollock and Herbert Sutcliffe, other than Bradman, finished beyond that mark. Headley played 22 test matches and Pollock 23; are these enough to prove a man’s place in the pantheon? How do we judge Kenny Barrington’s 6806 runs at 58.67 against Jacques Kallis’s 13,289 at 55.37 in twice as many matches? Or the celebrated techniques of Sir Jack Hobbs, Walter Hammond and Sir Len Hutton against the gifts given to Stan McCabe, Sid Barnes and Neil Harvey? And so on.
Of all Bradman’s figures, one that requires a second look is the 56.57 he averaged during the Bodyline series in 1932–33 with a strike rate of 74 runs per 100 balls. He wore the traditional green cap of Australia and was thus exposed to physical danger, while at the same time being unable to score in various areas of the ground because the law permitted any number of fielders anywhere. Those who played against West Indies from 1976 were confronted by multiples of this physical danger. Helmets came to build confidence but, by then, laws were long in place to restrict negative field setting. How would Bradman have played Larwood had he worn a helmet and been able to attack the leg-side field behind square? We have no idea, of course, which is why achievement can only be judged within the parameters of the moment. We can, however, be certain that helmets have changed technique and expanded options. As Kerry Packer famously said to Justin Langer, ‘Son, if we hadn’t invented helmets, you’d be dead.’
On a general level, the best batting I ever watched came from Sachin Tendulkar during the 1998 series against Australia in India, the series when he plotted for Shane Warne and then mauled him. In the build-up to the tour, Tendulkar set up shop for a week with Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, the former Indian leg spinner who brought a bunch of young leggies with him. Three pitches were prepared—one new but very dry, one totally underprepared and dusting, and one torn apart by spikes and rakes. Each day, they moved from pitch to pitch as Tendulkar defended, attacked and slogged his way into a method to combat anything Warne put before him. That series confirmed Bradman’s idea, first conceived a few years earlier by his wife, Jessie, that there were definite similarities between the two of them: the man with the highest average and the man with the most runs and most hundreds.
During the Channel 4 television days I did a masterclass with him and asked, as I had done with Viv, if there was a secret. ‘Not really a secret,’ he said. ‘For a batsman, each day is different. The mental set-up, the way the feet move, the bat swing, all of it. You have to adjust to mood and moment. Have faith in your talent, keep coaching to a minimum and trust your instincts.’ Good advice. He had previously talked to me about his floating technique—or the Zen mind—and agreed with Barry that it is a magical feeling. The masterclass was broadcast live from the Rose Bowl in Southampton and even Richie Benaud came out to watch and listen.
The best single Test-match innings I have seen was Brian Lara’s epic unbeaten 153-run match-winner in Barbados in 1999, again against the Australians. Lara loved the Aussies. He first announced himself with a classic at the Sydney Cricket Ground in 1992. They eventually ran him out for 277 and, as Warne often says,
they weren’t going to get him out any other way. Lara named his daughter Sydney after that day, and likes to tell people that it is lucky he didn’t play the innings in Lahore.
Wisden recalls the performance in Barbados as ‘transcendent’ and played by ‘the hand of a genius’. There is more: ‘Exhibiting the new awareness and maturity he discovered in Jamaica, he brilliantly orchestrated the conclusion of an unforgettable match. He guided his men to victory as though leading the infirm through a maze.’ It was one of the greatest Test matches, won by a single wicket and signed off by one of the greatest innings. Lara is flattered by the judgement and rates his double-hundred a week earlier in Jamaica even higher, though I think that is as much for the emotional circumstances in which it was played as the quality with which it was played. During this series, Lara matched anything Richards or Sobers had managed before him.
Twice, of course, Lara held the world record Test match score. First with 375 against England at the old St Johns Recreation Ground in Antigua in 1994. Then with 400 not out in 2004: same opponent, same ground. It is one thing to hold the world record, and quite another to go and get it back a decade later. Angus Fraser, who played in the first of those matches, says it is the only time he bowled at someone who, he thought, could hit every ball for four. (Peter Sainsbury said that of Peter May.) For good measure, Lara has the world-record first-class score too, 501 not out for Warwickshire against Durham. Chris Scott, the Durham wicketkeeper dropped a sitter when Lara had 18. He turned to Wayne Larkins at first slip and said, ‘Shit, I suppose he’ll get a hundred now.’ Sure did Chris, and some.
When I asked Lara the same question, he quite understood what Barry Richards and Sobers had said about reacting to the point of the ball’s release. He had not consciously done so himself but he thought it probably happened subconsciously. ‘What else would I watch?’ Quite so. He had no other insight to his own mastery except to say that he gave the first 40 minutes of any innings in the long form of the game to the bowler. After that, good luck.
As previously established, my cricket addiction took hold in the mid-1960s, when I was starstruck by Ted Dexter and John Snow. Watching, reading, listening and impersonating until lights out, I came to see the 1970s as a golden age. The finest batsmen I set eyes upon were—in a batting order, for the sake of it—Sunil Gavaskar, Barry Richards, Viv Richards, Graeme Pollock, Greg Chappell and Sobers. Others could do marvellous things, but these six men captured the essence of my dream whether as underdog or bully and, occasionally, there were moments of both for all of them. Only Tendulkar and Lara have stepped in their footprints since.
Ricky Ponting, Jacques Kallis and Kumar Sangakkara were very close. A.B. de Villiers and Virat Kohli are on track. In fact, having watched the two of them bat in all three formats over the past two years, I would say that greatness is theirs for the taking. Both have appeared routinely capable of the obvious, the oblique and the outrageous—but we must not be lost in the deeds of T20 cricket. Rather, we should reference their performances in Test-match cricket where they have set new standards for the aspiration of others.
To illustrate this, I would pick de Villiers’ 91 against Australia at Centurion in 2014, when he resisted Mitchell Johnson and Ryan Harris at their most punishing. While gifted colleagues such as Hashim Amla and Faf du Plessis were laid to waste, de Villiers moved smoothly forward and back as if he were batting on a magic carpet. Unhurried and unshackled, he transcended the pattern of the Test match. Perhaps he, too, has discovered a way to float while batting.
Of late, much has been made of Kohli’s high level of fitness and feverish desire. This has come from an astonishing series of performances in one-day and T20 cricket. But these attributes were first made unarguably apparent to the world in the two superb hundreds he made against Australia at Adelaide in 2014—the first match after the death of Phillip Hughes. In reference to the second of them, Sidharth Monga, writing on Cricinfo, said that Kohli attained ‘batting nirvana’ during an unlikely run chase that he threatened to complete almost single-handedly: ‘This was the “zone” batsmen talk of, when conditions, match state, batting partners, bowlers don’t matter. You just watch the ball, and react to it. No premeditation, no eye on the future.’ The thing I most remember was the exasperation of the bowlers at the moment when they seemed to have beaten him, only for instinct and the fastest hands in the game to react and recover.
These two have held my attention and frequently led me to gasp at the wonder of it all. The more I see of Joe Root, the more I think he can be included in this elite. The three of them are pioneering a total form of batting that can be applied to all three formats of the game. Their reference to the demands of footwork and bat control is close to flawless and yet, at the same time, they are redefining movement, range and risk. Best of all, there appears to be no limit to their ambition. Indeed, when Root went to 200 against Pakistan at Old Trafford in 2016, he did so with a full-blooded reverse sweep. He certainly appears to play in an untroubled manner. Crowe would be envious of this, while being full of admiration for the rhythm that Root brings to batting in all situations and all formats. These three men remind us of the beauty of progress.
But, as I say, it is the first six from the golden age who got me at hello. It is with their completed careers that we can advance discussion. Because all were either at their best, or somewhere near it, in the ten-year period between 1968 and 1978, it is more straightforward to compare and calibrate them. Batting for the World XI against the Australians in a WSC match at Gloucester Park in Perth, the two Richards went through the gears together and it is hard to imagine a better dovetail. (Kohli and de Villiers achieved something similar while at the crease for the Royal Challengers Bangalore in the IPL.)
We have already established that Viv’s ability to overwhelm an opponent cannot be matched. He began each innings as if it were a crusade, emerging from the pavilion with the innate conviction of right and the promise of dominance. Has any sportsman made such an entrance? Sir Leonard once noted that Richards ‘goes on about being descended from slaves and cotton pickers, but he walks to the wicket as if he owns the plantation’.
The best Viv Richards innings were the most spectacular cricket shows on earth: inflammatory, irresistible, inspirational. After the English heatwave summer of 1976, John Arlott wrote that Viv ‘exerted a headlong mastery even more considerable than Don Bradman at the same age’. The bats were balsawood compared to those used today and the boundaries bigger. His leg-side play fuelled the legend but it was the power of the riposte—the sense of vengeance for a suppressed people—that rang out the loudest. No wonder Bob Marley’s ‘Redemption Song’ is top of his hit list.
The other Richards, Barry, had everything: the purist might argue more even than Viv if technical accomplishment is the benchmark. The South African government’s apartheid policy denied Barry the one thing he most deserved, a relevant place in the game’s history, but he should travel happy in the knowledge of the pleasure he gave in the parts of the world his passport allowed.
At his best, he was pretty much flawless but the unpredictability of his mood meant he flirted with audiences, sucking them in to his unique gifts but too often spitting them out in a careless departure from the business at hand. Batting for Hampshire in a 40-over match at Southampton in 1976, he went from 95 to 101 deliberately playing John Lever with the edge of his bat. Then he hit a long hop up in the air and walked off. That arrogance rankled with even his most devoted followers.
There is an apocryphal tale about Barry batting for his club, Durban High School Old Boys, in an important league match. So hard was it to motivate him for such a trivial affair that Dennis Gamsy, a Test player himself, challenged him to hit ball after ball to predetermined areas of the ground. Suitably amused, Barry made 70-odd in less than an hour and never once missed a chosen target.
There are any number of such stories. Clearly, his gifts were as extraordinary as the politics that denied their fulfilment. Sadly, as Barry tire
d of the limitations of first-class, epics were replaced by cameos and the game that had once been his inspiration became a chore.
Few players have had such time to play the ball. He stood side-on to the bowler, chin tucked in tight to his left shoulder, and held the bat with an orthodox grip and an exaggerated high left elbow. This made him immensely strong through the off side from either foot and, until Root, I had not seen anyone—not even Tendulkar—drive the ball off the back foot through the covers in such sublime fashion. The brilliance in the placement of these strokes seemed to mock the opponent.
Like Tendulkar, he applied straight lines to the art of batting, which leads to a geometric effect. If the great stylists among left-handers—Frank Woolley and David Gower; Sobers and Lara—had the more vivid brushstrokes, the right-handers, such as Richards, Tendulkar, Greg Chappell and a couple of others not yet mentioned here—Mahela Jayawardena and Mark Waugh—brought linear brilliance to their contrasting artistic impression. One man’s Picasso has always been another man’s Rembrandt.
At Perth in 1970, Barry made 325 in a day for South Australia against Western Australia. Ian Chappell says that in the hurry to get to 300 before the close, their new recruit from Natal farmed the strike to ensure he was hitting downwind. Chappell adds that the final ball of the day, bowled by Dennis Lillee, was driven back over Lillee’s head with such ease that it appeared to be the sort of thing Richards did every day.
The originality in his stroke-play came from an inquisitive and unrestricted sporting mind. He hated the mundane, still does, and was the first to back away from the line of the ball and either late-cut straight balls or smash them over extra cover. He sees batting as something beautiful and believes that with his talent for it came the duty to entertain.
A Beautiful Game Page 16
