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Showing posts with label Richards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Richards. Show all posts

Thursday 19 January 2017

Peter Roebuck's Somerset agony

David Hopps in Cricinfo

The civil war that beset Somerset cricket more than 30 years ago was all the more remarkable because of the unimposing, bespectacled figure at its centre. Peter Roebuck would not have immediately struck a casual observer as a man capable of going to war. An unconventional loner, gauche even with close friends, he did not meld easily with either the old-fashioned administrators in charge of the club or the imposing superstars, Ian Botham, Viv Richards and Joel Garner, who would eventually be expunged from a Somerset dressing room that had fallen on hard times.

The conflict that took hold of the sleepy market town of Taunton throughout the summer of 1986 dominated the sports pages in a way that now is hard to imagine. Until now, it has only been possible to hazard a guess at Roebuck's state of mind as he became the principal hate figure for rebel supporters who were campaigning against the county's decision to release their great, long-serving West Indians, Richards and Garner and, as a consequence, accept the ensuing departure of Ian Botham in protest.

Previously unpublished diaries, which were not made available to the authors of the excellent Chasing Shadows: The Life and Death of Peter Roebuck in 2015, have now revealed the full extent of Roebuck's mental anguish. Condemned by his critics, increasingly reviled by Botham in a rift that would last a lifetime, and often left to flounder by Somerset's archaic administration, he presents himself as an honourable man who made his choice and forever fretted over the consequences.

"Lots of people are asking about my health," he writes as Somerset's warfare reaches its height. "I suspect they are waiting for a crack-up." Somerset comfortably won the vote to let go of Richards and Garner at an emergency meeting at Shepton Mallet in November 1986, and Roebuck took the spoils, but his life would never be the same again. Even as victory approaches, he rails at English society as "mean, narrow and vindictive" and falls out of love with the country of his birth for the rest of a life that was to end in tragic circumstances 25 years later.

By the time he wrote his autobiography, Sometimes I Forgot To Laugh, in 2004, Roebuck was able to tell the Somerset story with relative calm. Not so in his diaries, typed out contemporaneously in obsessive detail, complete with scribbled adjustments. Three unseen chapters of a book called 1986 And All That have been discovered and placed on the family website. "The truth can finally be told," is how the family puts it.

Roebuck was in his first season as Somerset captain, regarding himself as a more relaxed figure, at 30, than the intense batsman who had written the self-absorbed study of life on the county circuit, Slices of Cricket, a few years earlier. That self-ease soon departed. In midsummer he was informed at an emergency meeting of the management and cricket committee that Martin Crowe, not yet a New Zealand star, merely a young batsman making his way, and someone who had spent time with Somerset's 2nd XI with an eye to a future signing, had been approached by Essex.

Crowe, Roebuck writes, was "a man of brilliance rare in the game, a man of standards rare in the game". Roebuck's yearning to reshape a failing, ageing Somerset side has youth and work ethic at its core and encourages him to support the majority preference on the committee to sign Crowe and release Richards and Garner after many years of loyal service. One wonders how Botham will respond to Roebuck's allegation in the diaries that Botham viewed Crowe at the time as little better than a good club player.

In Somerset, Richards and Garner were far more than overseas players. They were part of their limited-overs folklore, as much a part of Somerset as scrumpy or skittles. As Roebuck, this cricketing aesthete, frets over the implications, he writes in his diary: "Echoes in my mind kept repeating that this Somerset team could never work, could never be worthwhile unless we abandoned the past and began to build a team around Crowe. Our chemistry was wrong. It hadn't worked with Botham as captain, and it wasn't working with Roebuck as captain. We'd lose Crowe to Essex."



Botham at the press conference announcing his decision to leave Somerset Adrian Murrell / © Getty Images


A couple of weeks later, that course of action was confirmed. Sworn to secrecy until the end of the season by a Somerset management and cricket committee of 12, a body which Roebuck naively imagines is capable of confidentiality, he ludicrously seeks to maintain discretion in the height of summer in a dressing room awash with rumour. Out on the field, "smiles hid hatred". In Roebuck's version of events, all those responsible for the decision keep their heads down and often fail to tell him what is going on. Rebels soon force an emergency special meeting, and at the end of the season virtually everybody but him seems to disappear for a prolonged holiday - acts, in some cases, of breathtaking irresponsibility. He delays his return to Australia, where he spends the close season, to see the job through.

"I was bound to be forsaken by friends," he writes. "It was all right for them, they were amateurs, committee men, they could leave this club and this game at any moment. It was my living, much more was at stake."

A cerebral and unclubbable man, he is ill-equipped for the task - whether the art of appeasement or politics. Lost in his own thoughts, he reads cricket books, watches movies, takes long baths, and makes impromptu visits around the county in search of understanding. Some imagined friends desert him, some of them quite cruelly, and, for the first time, he is assailed by scurrilous rumours about his private life. Tabloid journalists descend upon Taunton, enquiring about his relationship with the young cricketers he houses on an annual basis. Fifteen years later, his belief in the educative value of corporal punishment was to lead to a guilty plea, to his instant regret, to three charges of common assault against South African teenagers.

Roebuck's insistence that he will not surrender to "moral blackmail" is one of the most revealing passages in these freshly discovered chapters. "These tactics, this moral blackmail, this offer not to tell lies if I will not tell facts, must not rush me into a hasty marriage with attendant car and nappies. Through my life so far, I've tried to be as independent, financially and personally, as possible… I fear love for its invasion of privacy though now, at last, I begin to think about it. For the present, I have two lives (in England and Australia), three careers (cricket, writing, teaching), and a variety of ways of keeping the world, though not friendship, at its distance. I don't care a jot what anyone else does in private, so long as it does not hurt people. I want to help the young, something I've failed to do so far in my years at Somerset because I was too involved in my own game to care for anyone else."

The Roebuck family website goes as far as to suggest "a causal connection" between events at Somerset that fateful summer and the manner in which his life came to a tragic end many years later. You would have to be a believer in chaos theory to accept this conclusion without reservation.

Another 25 years elapsed before Roebuck fell to his death from a Cape Town hotel window in 2011 while being questioned by police about an alleged sexual assault, which remains unproven. A police statement at the time said that Roebuck, by then a celebrated author and journalist, committed suicide, a version of events that was accepted by a closed inquest, before last month South Africa's Director of Public Prosecutions responded to family lobbying and agreed to review the findings.

In mental turmoil he might have been, but Roebuck required no passage of time to see the mid-1980s as a period when county cricket's unwieldy amateur committees were no longer fit for purpose, unable to deal with the advent of the celebrity cricketer. It is no coincidence that the mid-'80s also saw county cricket's other great conflict, as Yorkshire descended into internecine strife over the future of Geoffrey Boycott.

"Somerset, a small county area with a small county cricket team is one of the battlegrounds upon which this battle is taking place. It is a battle between old-fashioned standards and celebration of stardom. It isn't really a battle between management and worker at all. Botham is not a worker, cannot pretend to be a working class hero. In this battle the management and the workers are on the same side. "



Roebuck bats in a benefit match for Botham in Finchley, London © Getty Images


Somerset's general committee is elderly white males to a man, and when Roebuck goes to an area committee meeting in the seaside town of Weston, where incidentally he finds warm support, he learns that a 26-strong committee has been extended to 27 just because somebody else asked to join. "We must change this old, male hegemony in charge of cricket," he writes. "A game cannot, in 1986, be run by genial, sensible pensioners. It is frightening how much cricket depends on the tireless voluntary work of old men."

Much has been made over the years about the enmity that grew from this summer onwards between Roebuck and Botham, polar opposites in character and cricketing approach, But it is Roebuck's fear of Richards' volcanic temperament that stands out most in these unseen chapters, such as an exchange during a Championship match at Worcester, after Somerset's intentions are known, a day that begins with Roebuck strolling by the banks of the Severn in search of rural bliss and soon becomes something altogether more tempestuous.

"Viv asked to see me in private, so we went upstairs where we wouldn't be disturbed. For the next 15 minutes he launched a tirade of abuse […] He said I was a sick boy, a terrible failure, an unstable character, someone who should never be put in charge of anything… He said I hadn't yet seen his bad side and he'd unleash it upon me from now on. During this torrent, I sat quietly, not angry at all though a little startled."

Tensions with Botham are also laid bare. "Botham is trying to form the players into a gang behind him," Roebuck writes. "He's shown little interest in these young cricketers on previous occasions, but he is a formidable warrior… If he can't win them over he'd certainly try to bully them into line." He even explores likenesses between Botham and Percy Chapman, an Ashes-winning captain in 1926, who "fell into decline, drinking heavily and putting on weight, ravaging his body". He questions Botham's desire to be surrounded by like-minded "chums", not stopping to reflect that he himself was also bent upon building a Somerset side in his own image.

"I am not a loner," he concludes, "rather my preferred pursuits (reading, writing, music) are solitary. I am private, it is true, and enjoy the companionship of my close friends much more than the conviviality of a loud, large group. As for splitting the team, the whole point of this struggle was that it had been split for years."

Wednesday 7 March 2012

Viv Richards is 60

Sir Viv Richards: the personification of grace and menace combined

Happy 60th birthday, Sir Viv Richards – one of the finest postwar batsmen of them all who could reduce an attack to rubble
Sir Viv Richards
Sir Viv Richards on his way to 138 not out as West Indies retained the Prudential World Cup at Lord's in 1979 after beating England by 92 runs. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

This I can see as clearly now as if it were only yesterday: pitch at Lord's, under covers for a week and more and as green as Paddy's Day, me with a new ball, and the start of a much-delayed, postponed and greatly reduced domestic limited-overs semi-final. The first delivery was spot-on, bang on length and line and, on pitching, it jagged back sharply off the seam and sank into the unprotected inside of the thigh of the batsman pushing forward.

The next was all but identical (the pitch marks, scarred on the grass, were within six inches of one another) and again the batsman came forward at it. Only this time he changed his mind midway, shifted his weight on to the back foot, and, clean as you like, thumped it with a vertical bat and high elbow not just over mid-off, or even the boundary rope, but over the corner of what is now the Compton stand and on to the Nursery. It remains the single most devastating shot I have ever seen. And Vivian Richards played a few in his time. What would he be worth today?

It is more than a year since last I saw him. Or rather he saw me, across an airport transit lounge, me en route to the Ashes, he for a tour of King and I shows with Rodney Hogg. "Hey Selve, what's happening, man?" He looked dapper, a porkpie hat perched rakishly in place of the familiar maroon cap, a little thicker round the face but still that Big Bad John "kinda broad at the shoulder and narrow at the hip" appearance that made him look as much like a top middleweight as the greatest batsman of the modern era. Even as he reaches three score years on Wednesday, he looks fighting fit.

So, from Singapore to Sydney, we supped a little and chewed the fat. There were things I wanted to ask him that I never had. Which of all the great West Indies fast bowlers of his time would he pick for his dream quartet? Andy Roberts, he said, his fellow Antiguan with an astounding cricket brain who was there at the start of it all; and the brilliant, much-lamented Malcolm Marshall. Then came Mikey, the great svelte Holding. And finally not the rumbling faithful Big Bird Joel Garner, but instead the brooding stringbean Curtly Ambrose. But, Richards admitted further, if he wanted someone to blast him a wicket, without fear, favour or consequence, there was none more chilling than Colin Croft.

Now tell me, I asked him, since it's a long time over, how do you think that bowlers – or specifically, me – should have approached the task of bowling to you. I had successes, but generally they would have been early on in an innings as he sought the upper hand and took calculated risks. Hard graft after that. You had to be aggressive, he said with some passion, aggressive. It mattered not if fast, slow or medium, spin, swing or seam, you had to demonstrate positive intent or you were shot from the start.

When, after he took guard, he wandered down the pitch, tilted his head back and, looking down his aquiline nose to eyeball the bowler, it was almost as if he was sniffing the air through his flared nostrils for the scent of fear. He wanted to feel the ball "sweet" off the bat from the off, and then he knew it was his day. Yeah aggressive, he repeated, he respected that.

But this was always easier said than done because of the way he set it up. There is an analogy with the buzz in a theatre before the curtain goes up on a great thespian. The wicket falls, but he allowed things to settle, waiting for the arena to clear, the celebrations (more muted in those days) to die down. The theatre lights dimmed and expectation became electricity. Everyone knew who was coming. And when he finally made his entrance, swaggering down the steps, cudding his gum, and windmilling his bat gently, first one arm then the other, it was a personification of grace and menace combined, the walk as unmistakable as had been that of Garry Sobers, to my mind his only rival as the finest postwar batsman of them all.

I put on a performance, he told me, it was part of my act. He wanted to dominate and the genesis of that process happened even before he closed the dressing-room door behind him. His reputation preceded him like an advance guard. It continued with the languid wicketwards saunter, the slow precision with which he took guard, the way he ambled down the pitch to tap down an imaginary mark, all the while looking for, and not always finding, eye contact with his adversary. Then he would smack the end of his bat handle with the palm of his right hand, a final intimidatory gesture.
There have been giants of the game contemporary and since, batsmen of vast pedigree and achievement: Greg Chappell, Lara, Tendulkar, Ponting, Dravid, Kallis, Sangakkara, Hayden and others. Each on his day could reduce an attack to rubble. But Richards had an aura given to no other. Truly he was scary. Happy birthday, Viv.

Monday 5 December 2011

It's not how you begin...Players who failed to light up their debuts but went on to shine later in their careers

by Steven Lynch


Shane Warne bowls in his first Ashes Test, England v Australia, 1st Test, Manchester, June 1993
When he started out, Shane Warne didn't give any hint he would become the greatest legspinner in the game © Getty Images
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Marvan Atapattu
As an opening batsman you can't do much worse than begin your Test career with scores of 0 and 0, 0 and 1, and 0 and 0 (and, reports suggest, even that one run was actually a leg-bye). That was the nightmare start that Sri Lanka's Atapattu endured in three Tests from 1990 to early 1994. It was - perhaps not surprisingly - more than three years before he got another game, when at last he got into double figures. But he did very well after that, finishing a 90-Test career with 5502 runs and 16 centuries, no fewer than six of them doubles.
Shane Warne
In January 1992, when Warne was rather rounder than he is today - Ian Healy commented back then that Warnie's idea of a balanced diet was a cheeseburger in each hand - the great legspinner made an undistinguished Test debut in Sydney, taking one Indian wicket for 150 in 45 overs: his victim was Ravi Shastri, out to what Wisden called "a tired shot" after having amassed 206 in 572 minutes. After no wickets in the next Test, and 0 for 107 in the first innings of his third one, in Colombo in August 1992, Warne had a bowling average of 335.00 when he was handed the ball again in the second innings as Sri Lanka closed in on a probable victory. Suddenly things started to get better: he secured an unlikely win, taking three wickets for no run in 11 deliveries. The rest, as they say, is history.
Len Hutton
England tried out a new opening pair against New Zealand for the first Test against New Zealand at Lord's in 1937. James Parks (the father of the 1960s England wicketkeeper Jim) made 22 and 7, while a young Yorkshireman - he celebrated his 21st birthday on the rest day - made 0 and 1. Only one of them was named for the next Test - and, you've guessed it, it was Hutton who was retained. He scored 100 at Old Trafford, and the following year made 364 against Australia: in all he won 79 caps, and scored nearly 7000 runs. Poor Parks, however, never played another Test.
Viv Richards
One of the most intimidating batsmen of all time, Richards made a less than scintillating start in Tests, managing only 4 and 3 against India in Bangalore in 1974-75, falling in each innings to the whirling legspin of Bhagwat Chandrasekhar. But any thoughts of a weakness against spin were banished in the next Test, in Delhi, where Richards slammed six sixes in an imperious 192 not out to set up an innings victory. That was the first of 24 Test centuries for the "Master Blaster".
Merv Hughes
After taking just one wicket for 123 in his first Test, against India, Hughes was pasted all round the Gabba by Ian Botham in the 1986-87 Ashes opener. After the next Test Merv had a bowling average nudging 50, and hadn't even looked like scoring a run. You'd have got long odds on him achieving the Test double of 1000 runs and 100 wickets, but he turned himself into a serviceable batsman and did just that. And his bowling improved out of sight too: he finished up with 212 Test wickets, most of them celebrated by squeezing a few well-chosen words through that famous bushy moustache in the general direction of the departing batsman. Probably Hughes' greatest sledge came not long after Pakistan's Javed Miandad had labelled him "a fat bus conductor". A few balls later Hughes dismissed him, and charged past, yelling "Tickets please!"
Graham Gooch
On his Test debut against Australia at Edgbaston in 1975, Gooch had a moustache to rival Merv's - and his batting was as productive as Hughes' in his early Tests. Gooch departed for 0 and 0, tickling a couple of catches to the predatory Rod Marsh, and after one more match returned to county cricket for three years to tighten things up. He re-emerged, tightness personified, to kickstart a Test career that ultimately brought him 8900 runs, still the England record.
Michael Holding
We remember Holding now as just about the perfect fast bowler - athletic, graceful, and above all scarily fast. But it wasn't all plain sailing at first: he took 0 for 127 in his debut Test, in Australia in 1975-76, and finished that chastening series - which the Aussies won 5-1 - with just 10 wickets at 61.40, being reduced to tears at one point as things went against him. Things began to look up later in 1976, though, when Holding blew England away with 14 wickets on a slow pitch at The Oval. "Whispering Death" had arrived.
Jeff Thomson
One reason the England tourists Down Under in 1974-75 didn't take much notice of Thomson's pre-series bluster about how much he liked to hurt batsmen was that they knew he had played just one previous Test, against Pakistan in 1972-73, and finished with 0 for 110 in 19 expensive overs. But what Mike Denness and Co. probably didn't know was that Thommo had been nursing a broken foot in that match - he thought he'd better play, in case he never got another chance. The next call duly came in Brisbane two years later, and Thomson shook England up with 6 for 46 in the second innings, then 5 for 93 in Perth in the next Test, both of which Australia won comfortably. By the time he ruled himself out of the series by injuring his shoulder playing tennis, Thommo had taken 33 wickets in four and a half matches, and the Ashes were back in Australian hands. He ended up with 200 Test wickets, exactly 100 of them against England.

Saeed Anwar sweeps Harbhajan Singh as Mongia looks on, India v Pakistan, Asia Test Championship, Eden Gardens, Calcutta, 16-20
Saeed Anwar: nothing impressive about him, eh? © ESPNcricinfo Ltd
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Gautam Gambhir
Test stardom - and multi-million IPL contracts - probably seemed a long way off for Gambhir after his first Test for India, against Australia in Mumbai in November 2004, produced scores of 3 and 1 on an admittedly dodgy pitch (India won in three days, bowling Australia out for 93 in their second innings). The selectors stuck by Gambhir, who repaid them by making 96 in the next Test, against South Africa, and 139 against Bangladesh a few weeks later. Despite trouble with injuries, he now has more than 3500 Test runs.
Brad Hogg
Cricket's most famous ex-postman made his Test debut in Delhi in October 1996, replacing Shane Warne, who was recovering from surgery to his hand. Hogg, an unorthodox left-arm spinner, had an undistinguished start: his 17 overs cost 69, although he did claim the wicket of Sourav Ganguly. He didn't play another Test for six and a half years, although he did have a long run in Australia's one-day side. One story has it that Hogg had longed all his career to hear Ian Healy growl from behind the stumps, "Well bowled, Hoggy" ... but bowled so indifferently that it was never actually said.
Saeed Anwar
Given Pakistan's capricious selection policies, the deliciously wristy opener Anwar might never have played again after he bagged a pair in his first Test, against West Indies in Faisalabad in November 1990. As it was, he didn't win another Test cap for more than three years - but made it count when he did, with 169 against New Zealand in only his third match. Anwar ended up with 4052 runs in Tests - and more than double that (8824) in one-day internationals.
Steven Lynch is the editor of the Wisden Guide to International Cricket 2011.
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