by Excerpt from Michael Holding's "Whispering Death"
[On Viv Richards]
In my book, Viv Richards truly qualifies for the accolade of
"great" because he proved himself over an extended period every-
where, against every type of bowling, in all conditions, and fre-
quently, when the team was in trouble. He was so certain of him-
self that he never gave failure a thought. It is a hallmark of
his greatness that he would play shots that defied the textbook,
and yet he was just as capable of flawless orthodoxy and tight
defence.
With his belief in his own ability, Viv would strut around, giv-
ing the impression of arrogance. But he did'nt have to brag about
how good he was. For him, actions spoke louder than words.
Playing together with him for the West Indies, I thankfully
didn't have to bowl at him much. When I did, I knew I couldn't
devise any specific plan to get him out as I would with most oth-
er batsmen. I would just try to bowl as tight as possible and
hope for him to make a mistake. He was a genius, capable of hit-
ting the same ball three different ways to the boundary. With
such a batsman, you just try not to let him embarrass you.
Richards used his body language as part of his method of psycho-
logically dominating the bowler. After hammering a boundary, he
would saunter down the pitch and just tap it with his bat while
giving the bowler an annoying smirk or fixing him with a stern
glare. Whenever I bowled against him, I would either ignore him
completely, not even looking at him, or else go the other route
and applaud any good shots. But he upset a lot of bowlers who got
uptight at his antics, none more so than Lennie Pascoe who came
into the Australian team during the Packer years. Lennie had hot
Czech(*) *** pumping through his veins and it seldom took very
long for him to lose his cool and start bouncing - and it wasn't
very long before fine leg would be retrieving balls hit by
Richards from over the fence.
In his later years, Richards had problems with his health, and
was not as consistent as he was in his heyday, which I would put
as the years between 1976 and 1981. He still tried to play the
impossible shots that used to come so easily but his eyesight and
reflexes were just not the same and his big scores became fewer
and fewer. However, at his peak, as he was on this tour, he was
incomparable.
(* ed. note: Yugoslav really :-)