At twelve, simmering in jingoistic frustration, in a flash of juvenile insanity, I blurted a racial slur at someone on TV. For weeks due to less serious lowly behaviour, my dad had been warning I was headed for a ‘good clip around the year.’ He’d promised so often, maybe I’d become curious. He happened to be sitting next to me, that night. The good hard clip around the ear landed. Funnily enough I wasn’t one bit curious how it might feel a second time.
The man I’d insulted was on his way to a hundred again, annulling Australia’s chances again. The forearms rippled like a boxer’s. The rump was equine. The face was carved. Bowlers were in a bind facing Viv Richards. Anything but their best was insufficient. On the other hand, provoking him brought its punishments.
For Australians born in the ’70s, his image became indelibly part of summer. He was part of summer’s personality, part of its rhythm. If you’re too young to remember Viv (or too old), there’s always YouTube, where you’ll see a player of horse strength and panther grace, a player who when really roaring made bowlers visibly flinch in follow-through.
But Richards was more than an unusually good athlete. He was an attitude, a one-man atmosphere permeating a million lounge-rooms in a breeze. Aura is an overused word. Charisma, too, has been driven into the dust. If such a thing exists, and if it has an essence, it may be just this: someone who would have excelled, if not in one venture, then another. Put another way, Viv could’ve been an exceptional cab-driver, town-mayor, teacher, butcher, baker or candlestick maker. Force of personality, magnetism – whatever we agree to call it – Vivian Richards from Antigua had it.
And he was big enough not to abuse it. The word arrogant was sometimes slapped on him but he was no more arrogant (and no less the champ) than Usain Bolt. Arrogance wasn’t required, and would only have distracted from the main event – inspired talent marshalled and fully realized, surrendering none of its freedom.
For Richards false modesty would’ve been counter-intuitive. It may even have been a health hazard – if you were cutting your teeth against Ian Chappell’s turbo-charged team of 75, in Australia, how much time would you spend cultivating self-effacement? Then there were his mates to face in the nets. No shrinking violets there.
With most athletes, the more breaks go their way the more upbeat the body-language. That’s natural enough, for any of us, in any endeavour. But when things aren’t going nearly as well, often another posture, another air shows. With Richards there was never any difference – not one discernible sign. Score was irrelevant. Form was irrelevant. Venue and conditions were irrelevant – the game could’ve been played on Mars and he would’ve looked forward to hitting a century.
The man just had unconditional unbreakable confidence in his gift.
Start with the stance.
Richards stood with perfect equilibrium, sizing up the bowler, turning a rounded shoulder at him. It was as if the Caribbean cricket-gods had put their heads together over rum and coca cola and come up with the complete stance: organised, dignified, open to anything a bowler might submit.
Between deliveries, striker or non-striker, he was all poise and pure theatre. Nobody ever leaned on their bat with quite the same luxurious grandeur. Maybe he’d go for a bit of a saunter, a man savouring a familiar shore: I’m at home here, at ease here, so save your breath. Or rest the blade against a shoulder, both gloves wrapped around the handle, a lumberjack resting between blows. He may be the only cricketer who could talk about himself in the third person and sound level-headed. “So Vivian Richards played a poor shot, why does every cat think Vivian Richards needs reminding everywhere he goes for two days?”
He had a radius of strokes, piercing placement, the quickest reflexes. He could be classical, improvisational, impassable, suddenly unrestrained. An unusually steady, near-statuesque head underpinned the style. He didn’t often charge at a bowler to change the length – eagle-eyes for an undeviating ball did the work. Even so he had the fleetest feet. Defending, Richards was watertight – all those imposing front foot off-drives were sweetly symmetrical extensions of forward defence: hoof to the pitch just so, hands soft, elbow high. When he launched that same shot in overdrive it was the most confronting thing a bowler could face.
But only a mug would pretend to fully understand Richards’ game – like Serena or Ali or Jordan or Tiger, the moves and snares and subtle modifications he alone was party to, were any number.
He played so well so often, so many summers. It contradicts all I’ve said, but it didn’t occur to us that figures like him didn’t come along often. He was always around; as routine as BBQ Shapes or singing your soles on baking bitumen.
Was there a definitive Viv stroke? No more than for Roger Federer. Of my own Viv memories, a piece of fielding takes the biscuit.
Summer ’84-’85, limited overs.
An Australian defends towards cover, where Richards, ambling, chewing, pretends not to be interested, poker-faced, letting it roll, goading the batsmen to take a free run – runs are at a premium against his team and he knows it. The batsmen take off in a bolt deciding it’s worth the gamble. With an amplified clunk a stump flattens as the non-striker stretches into screen. It could’ve been Graeme Wood – it could’ve been Carl Lewis and he still wouldn’t have got there.
Foxing, someone called it.
And the fox could hardly wipe the smile, whooping it up with Gus Logie and the boys. That was Richards all over: beating Australia flat; Australia who never learned its lessons, and who had him back every year because he was the ultimate guest.
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