Cricket Special Report: Sir Vivian Richards – the epitome of greatness (Part 3)
Vivian Richards was not the arrogant prince of the cricketing dynasty, but rather a humble and shy man. This man lived for the day and firmly believed in the Latin saying ‘carpedium’ which means, seize the day. In the words of Imran Khan, he was not a genius.
For a genius breaks down the thought process into smaller bits and pieces, systematically with rational thought and consideration, however that was never part of Richards game. He was an artist with a rough edge; an edge that made his paintings enthused with
raw emotion. Sir Richards was much like a gladiator, only skilled at his art, the art of delivering the last rites to his bowlers.
His thirst for vengeance on the cricketing field was fuelled by his memories to undo the injustices of the past. He was something of a reformist, a man who was out there to prove a point. His heroics against England, were fuelled by this deeper sense of
injustice that he blamed the British had perpetrated against his people by colonising the West indies and he punished them coming down upon them with great anger and fury.
In an era, that witnessed the birth of the fastest bowlers the world had seen, Vivian refused to wear a helmet. Not against Imran Khan or Kapil, not against Dennis Lillee or Jeff Thomson. He never wore a helmet not even against his own team mates that included
the likes of Michael Holding, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Marshall-c74817. He was like a ferocious fighter who refused to wear his armour because he was proud, even arrogant of his skill. He was like the red baron, challenging the bowlers to attack him, to come down
at him hard and he punished them even harder. Richards entrusted his life to his eyes and his nerves.
Some gave him the title of the black Bradman, not due to his ability to score tons of runs against world class bowlers but for his somewhat psychic ability to spot the bowl, to premeditate the angle and the trajectory before it had even been bowled. The
best of the bowlers, legends were afraid of http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Caesar-c49112 or Bismarck whatever title suits best to this gem of a man that the cricketing world had seen.
He was responsible for the physical and mental disintegration of his bowlers, through the penultimate savagery of his batting onslaught. During the West Indies tour of Australia, the bowlers that included one of the fastest the world had ever seen with the
likes of Jeff Thomson, Richards found himself in the middle of it all. Facing his greatest test.
The bowling was so quick that it took less than a minute for the ball to reach the stumps from the bowler’s fingers that gave the batsman less time than science makes us believe for him to react to it.
Vivian played against them with as much anger and emotion, as he painted the rest of his innings for http://www.senore.com/Cricket/West-Indies-c760 treating them with the same indifference like all others. It did not seem to matter how fast the ball was, or how short it was pitched or how
the ball made its way to gash at his throat. He simply flicked the ball or nip it boundary after another.
He played with one of the best timers of the ball, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Zaheer-Abbas-c98435 and Sunil Gavaskar. However, none of them could combine his rare sense of timing, his finely crafted talent of unleashing his fury under all sorts of circumstances and adversaries.
http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Kapil-Dev-c70234 fondly remembers a couple of shots of the fine cricketer from the final of 1983 World Cup that were picked from wide of off stump smashing them with unmatched brutality to square leg.
"My line was on and outside the off stump, to get him out with my outswinger. On both occasions I threw my arms up expecting an edge, only to see the umpire waving his arm to signal a boundary." Kapil reminisces as he looks back in retrospect.
In the words of John Birmingham, “If http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Australia-c746 were ever to prove competitive against their tormentors through that era, it meant getting rid of Richards early. It was more often a dream than reality.”
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