to the struggle.
During this period, the West Indies continued to dominate cricket. They had won two World Cups (1975 and 1979) and been finalists in 1983, they had exacted revenge on Australia after the 1975 series and emerged from Kerry Packer’s World Series ‘Supertests’ and one-day series against Australia and a World XI as arguably the world’s most dominant side.
The 1984 West Indies team had a distinct set of characters, particularly its fast bowlers. Each had unique bowling actions that appeared to speak volumes about their approach to the game. They were led by Malcolm Marshall, Michael Holding and Joel Garner. Marshall would charge in and bowl at such pace that he appeared to be moving faster than the ball once it was released from his hands. But he had craft and guile. Holding was graceful, haunting, elegant. He would glide in to bowl effortlessly, quietly, only to unleash deceptively vicious balls, which is why he had the nickname ‘Whispering Death’. And Joel Garner, all six feet eight inches of him, bundled in like an old man with a stitch running for the bus, only to uncoil at the last minute, lengthy like the Statue of Liberty, before delivering the ball so quick, so accurate, so full in length, he would make the batsmen jerk violently as if a rug had been pulled from beneath them. Missing from the 1984 tour was Andy Roberts: no-nonsense, stoic and the ‘father’ to all these bowlers, the man through which the West Indies’ fearsome reputation had been established.
The West Indies remained the favourites in 1984, although there had been some belief that England could push them. In the 1983 World Cup Final, India surprisingly defeated the West Indies. India had made a modest 183 runs and it appeared as if the West Indies would run away with a third World Cup in a row. Inspired by captain Kapil Dev, India rattled the West Indies out for a paltry 140 in one of the greatest upsets in cricket history.
In 1982, the West Indies had also lost some of their best players to a rebel tour in South Africa, at that point banned from international cricket due to apartheid. South Africa had been desperate to get back on the world sporting stage, so they started offering large sums of money to teams, mainly in cricket and rugby, to tour illegally. Nelson Mandela would later say that the sporting ban contributed to his freedom and indeed the end of the apartheid regime.
The first target had been Viv Richards. By 1983, he was acknowledged by many of his contemporaries as the greatest player in the world, and the greatest batsman since Australia’s legendary Don Bradman. Imran Khan, currently the Prime Minister of Pakistan and one of the great all-round cricketers in history, called Richards ‘a complete genius … no other batsman could attack me when I was at my peak’.4 Dennis Lillee, arguably the greatest fast bowler in history, said, in his autobiography Menace, that ‘for sheer ability to rip an attack apart, animal brutality and no fear in taking you on, I have to put Viv Richards on top of the list’. In 2000, Wisden would vote him as one of the five greatest players of the century, alongside Bradman, Sobers, Aussie spinner Shane Warne and English batsman Jack Hobbs.
His refusal to go to South Africa in 1983 had been symbolic. He was the best player in the world. The prize catch. If ever there had been a symbol of West Indies’ shift from Calypso Cricketers, Englishmen with brown skin, and colonial subjects to anti-racists, to independence, to rebels, it had been Richards. Wearing a red, gold and green wristband, the sight of Richards strutting from the pavilion to the batting crease was as dramatic and intimidating as watching Mike Tyson walk to a boxing ring. Richards would scan the audience and the opposing team as if they were his subjects. He would walk to the crease as if failure was not an option. In an era of hostile fast bowling, where Richards faced the likes of Lillee and Thomson from Australia, Imran Khan from Pakistan and his West Indian teammates, who he regularly faced in the English County Championship, Richards never wore a helmet. He had been a king without security, a superstar without a bodyguard, a target without protection.
Had Richards gone to South Africa, his departure would have signalled the premature death of West Indian cricket dominance and indeed all that the team had stood for since 1976. It would have opened the floodgates and made it acceptable for other Caribbean players to go.
‘The whole issue [of race and apartheid] is quite central to me,’ said Richards. ‘I believe very strongly in the black man asserting himself in this world and over the years I have leaned towards many movements that followed this basic cause.’5
In the end, a West Indian team comprising world-class batsmen like Lawrence Rowe and Alvin Kallicharran, all-rounder Franklyn Stephenson and fast bowlers like Colin Croft and Sylvester Clarke went on tour, much to the wrath of the Caribbean. Each had been paid allegedly around US$100,000, huge sums at the time, for two tours against the banned South African team. Upon arrival in 1982, they had been honoured/insulted by being classified as ‘honorary whites’. The tour had been a low point in the history of West Indies cricket. An unforgiveable stain. The ‘rebel’ players were less than ‘house negros’ and more like slave traders in the eyes of the Caribbean.
Former Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley summed up the feelings of Caribbean people in A History of West Indian Cricket when he wrote: ‘To the members of the black diaspora the oppression which continues unabated in South Africa has become the symbol of more than a tyranny to be overthrown. Apartheid points like a dagger at the throat of black self-worth in every corner occupied by the descendants of Africa.’
In South Africa, these players became heroes. In the Caribbean, they became outcasts, banned for life from playing for the West Indies. Some of the players moved to the United States, hiding until the controversy died down. Others resumed their careers in England, away from the gaze of the Caribbean authorities, media and fans. For the lesser players on that tour, those who could not command interest in teams outside of the Caribbean, they were not so fortunate. Richard Austin, who would later be known as ‘Danny Germs’, ended up a cocaine addict, begging on the streets of Kingston. Herbert Chang would end up losing all his money. According to Robert Craddock of The Courier-Mail, Chang was last seen ‘standing listlessly in the middle of the road … clearly out of it.’6 Chang had allegedly been heard saying, ‘Man, man, man, I just, I just wanna know which end I bowl from tomorrow.’7
The West Indies team that toured England in 1984 remained strong. In captain Clive Lloyd, opening batsmen Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes, Viv Richards and fast bowlers Marshall, Holding and Garner, the team were fielding seven legends in every match they played. Think Brazil’s 1970 World Cup football team, the All Blacks rugby union team from 2010 onwards, the Soviet Union’s great ice hockey teams in the seventies or USA basketball’s Dream Team at the 1992 Olympics. That West Indies team may have been the greatest Test side ever assembled.
In the first meeting between England and the West Indies that summer, a one-day international match at Old Trafford, Richards set the tone. He hit a then record 189 not out off 170 balls in what had been considered the greatest one-day batting performance in the history of the sport. But the one-day games had only been warm-up matches, starters. The main course would be the Test series.
Test cricket. Two teams. Five days. Two chances for each team to score the most runs. Team game. But a sequence of one-on-one challenges, bowler versus batsman. Difficult to follow all the way through. Long. Too long for even the most rational sports fan to follow. But surely one of the greatest of tests for any sportsman. Batting. Bowling. Fielding. Tactics. Weather. Violent weather. Control. Uncontrol. Beyond control. Pitches can dictate, be it hard, cracked, flat, great for batting, bad for bowling, bad for batting, great for bowling. It can all change from day to day. Momentum swings. Swinging all the time. Need for concentration, patience. Need your team, need all eleven men. Tuned in. Tuned on. Ready to battle, ready to roll, to play their role.
Couldn’t imagine. I played cricket to a high level at school. At one point, I represented four teams. These were one-day games. A few overs. A few hours to compete. Half a Saturday or weekday evening lost to the game. Exhausting. Couldn’t get over the powerlessness of cricket. During the many hours you play, you have a limited amount of time to have a direct impact. You may bowl five or ten overs. Can’t bowl all of them. If you’re batting and you’re bowled out, you’re out. No second chance. Better make the most of your time. The rest of the time you’re either fielding while teammates are bowling or sitting in the pavilion watching