‘It was as if Yehudi Menuhin had called into the Festival Hall of a morning, taken his fiddle on stage and reeled off faultless, unaccompanied Bach all day – just for the pleasure of the cleaners, box-office clerks, odd electricians or a carpenter who chanced to be there – without central heating, of course – without taking off his coat.’
Tony Lewis on Barry Richards’s innings at an empty Lord’s, 1974
IT just happened as it happened. No one had planned it, nothing had been scheduled, nothing organised. It was a day much like countless others in the life of a county cricketer. Net practice when no match is on the fixture list is not the way most professional cricketers would choose to spend a rare day off but the custom was almost de rigueur; it would be a brave captain who would say to his team, ‘You deserve a rest, lads – go and play golf.’
And a captain who was brave enough to defy custom would only feel he could get away with it if his team were looking down on everyone else from the top of the championship. Sixteen other sides, of course, would be looking upwards, so ‘naughty boy nets’ would be ordered and everyone had to be there.
And that included the ‘stars’, the overseas players. In the 1970s, every county was allowed two overseas players on its books and a brief glance at the playing staffs of those days would reveal a glittering collection of the world’s finest cricketers. Today, counties employ overseas players who are barely recognisable to the general public. Central contracts have put paid to county cricket being the finishing school for Test cricketers from other countries.
Even the England players now have little more than fleeting contact with their home county.
It was different then. The Hampshire side that gathered together at 10am by the nets at the county ground in Southampton one day in the 1974 season included two of the best cricketers on the planet – Barry Richards and Andy Roberts. Actually, there was a third – Gordon Greenidge – but owing to an oddity of the rules, he was registered as an Englishman, even though he had nailed his colours firmly to the West Indian mast.
He had come to this country from Barbados when he was 14 and was developing into one of the world’s most powerful and destructive opening bats. England, West Indies, Reading, Mars…we didn’t care where he came from as long as he was in our side. I say ‘our’ side because I was in that group of Hampshire players padding up or marking out their runs for the ensuing net practice. I was a fringe player, it has to be said, but though I was frustrated at my seeming inability to make much of an impact in the first team, I was nevertheless tickled pink to be rubbing shoulders with the best in the game.
For Hampshire were the best. The championship pennant fluttered proudly at the top of the flagpole and there was every hope, nay expectation, that the previous year’s triumph would be repeated.
Especially now that the world’s fastest bowler was registered to play for us. Those who had played with Roberts in the Second XI the season before, while he served his year’s period of qualification, were only too aware of his raw pace and his deadly potential. There had been one match, against Gloucestershire at Bournemouth that had already acquired legendary status and had done much to promote his fearsome reputation. Gloucestershire were 30-odd for one, with numbers six and seven at the wicket. The missing batsmen were either back in the pavilion nursing painful bruises or on their way to hospital. He was fast all right and that winter he had already made his Test debut for the West Indies.
The other overseas player was Barry Richards, who, by contrast, had no need to make a name for himself. Among the county fraternity, to say nothing of the wider cricketing public, he was regarded as the most technically proficient and naturally talented of any batsman on earth. Even so, together with one or two others in the Hampshire team that summer’s morning, he did not particularly relish the prospect of a morning in the nets; county cricket is a treadmill and he would rather have had the morning off, to relax and to catch up on his mail. But all were professionals and if nets had been ordered, then nets it must be. Everyone just got on with it.
Such practice sessions always followed a pattern, a routine. The batsmen would go in first, usually in the same order as on matchdays. There would be ten minutes in one net where the seamers were operating and then the coach would shout out, ‘Change nets!’ and a further ten minutes would be spent in the spinners’ net, where the surface was a little bit worn. By the time it came for the bowlers to bat and the batsmen to bowl, everybody had had enough and things rapidly deteriorated. ‘How do you expect me to hold my end up if the rest of you won’t bowl to me?’ would be the constant lament of the tail-enders to the retreating backs of his team-mates as they made their way back to the dressing room and a reviving cup of tea.
Richards strolled up the net, turned and took guard. He gave a little hollow laugh as someone gave him a guard several feet outside leg stump; it was an old trick and was becoming a little tiresome. He tugged at the blue Hampshire cap as he settled himself at the crease. It wasn’t brightly sunny as it was back in his Natal homeland but he always wore a cap. It helped to keep the long, curly, blond hair from getting in his eyes. Round about, everything was proceeding as normal. There were raucous shouts for LBW from the bowlers, equally vociferous responses of ‘not out!’ from the victims and several fingers would shoot upwards from those in positions where they could not possibly tell one way or the other. In other words, it was just like a hundred net sessions that season up and down the country.
Roberts wasn’t bowling. He was lurking. Fast bowling is physically demanding enough without having to strain nerve and sinew at a footling net practice. He didn’t really know why he was there. He couldn’t see the point. So he contented himself with lobbing down a few gentle off-spinners, which everybody, of course, treated with the utmost respect. But then we noticed that he had walked back as far as his normal run. Richards had noted it too and wondered what was going on. As a suitable gap presented itself in the bowling queue, Roberts came hurtling in, rocking from side to side in that familiar fashion, rather like a runaway express train, gathering his whole body in the delivery stride, to deliver the ball at full pace. Richards was ready for it and let it go but the bulge in the net behind him told him, as if he didn’t know already, that Roberts meant business this morning. It would not be wholly true to say that anything like silence fell upon the Hampshire team at practice but everyone was keeping one eye on the duel that was unfolding in the top net.
The thought processes of a fast bowler are largely unknowable to other cricketers. Unpredictable, mercurial, malevolent and moody are some of the more repeatable adjectives used by colleagues and opponents alike. Roberts was no exception. His natural expression was guarded, impenetrable. You never knew what he was thinking. Except that right now he fancied having a dart at Richards. Richards recognised the signs immediately – after all he was an opening batsman – and, with an inward sigh, he wondered what it was that he had done or said that morning to upset the Antiguan. No time to ponder. He had to knuckle down and concentrate. Reputations were at stake here, bragging rights. He was damned if he was going to let anyone get the better of him. Time to forgo the expansive strokeplay and the fancy shots. He would play properly.
Besides which, if he didn’t, there was every chance that he could get seriously hurt. Plenty had. Everyone clearly remembered the horrible injury – a smashed jaw – that Roberts had inflicted on the West Indian opener, Steve Camacho, the previous summer. As he was stretchered off, we were all kicking dirt on to the crease to soak up the blood before the next batsman came in. Oh yes, we all knew what damage a cricket ball could do when delivered at speeds in excess of 90mph.
Along with everybody else, I had been keeping one very interested eye on what was going on and I was not best pleased when someone had failed to spot the devilishly late swing of one of my deliveries and heaved the ball many a mile into the long grass. ‘That’ll take some finding,’ I grumbled to myself as I went in search of it, ‘and I shall miss all the fun.’
Chance would have it that I found my ball right away and, trudging back to my mark, I decided to make a detour around the back of the nets, the better to catch a close glimpse of the developing contest. There, you can stand a matter of feet behind the batsman and watch how he deals with whatever is bowled at him. It has been calculated that a batsman has 0.4 seconds to react to a ball delivered from 22 yards away at 90mph. The mathematics of the contest in that net escaped me at the time; all I know is that I flinched every time Richards let a ball go and it bulged the netting in front of my face. I remember thinking that I hoped to high heaven the groundsman had checked carefully that morning that the netting was safe and secure.
The following 15 minutes remained the most riveting piece of theatre I have ever witnessed on a cricket ground. And it was only a net practice! For some reason, the coach did not irately summon me back for cannon fodder duties. Probably, like me, he was engrossed in what was going on. Anyway, he forgot about me and I was able to take in the exhibition of a master craftsman at work. I should of course have said two master craftsmen for Roberts was no mindless slinger of a cricket ball. He was an intelligent bowler who worked batsmen out before he worked them over. That is what made the battle so intriguing.
To the uninitiated it might have seemed that not a lot was happening. Stumps did not cartwheel, balls did not disappear into the disused car park of the dilapidated bowling rink opposite. There was no shouting, no banter, no ironic cheers. But an intense struggle was taking place for supremacy and neither of them was minded to take a backward step.
I watched Richards closely as Roberts careered towards him. The most striking thing about him was his absolute stillness at the crease. Most of us – pretty well all of us, I would suggest – make an initial movement before the ball is bowled. With only a split second to react, the movement would be back and across, if only for the sake of self-preservation. Richards made no preliminary movement, forward or back. He remained motionless until the very moment the ball left the bowler’s hand. And yet he seemed to have time to play his shots. How could this possibly be? Was the man possessed with superhuman reactions? So we would test him out in the nets, running in to bowl to him and following through without letting the ball go. There he would be standing, bat raised but head and feet stock still. Extraordinary.
The second noteworthy feature of his batting was the economy of movement. He did not lunge or jab at the ball, nor did he jerk his body one way or the other or jump out of the path of the ball. Calmly, and seemingly with all the time in the world, he went forward or back as required – unsurprisingly more back than forward as we’re describing a genuine fast bowler here – or unhurriedly swayed out of the way of the bouncers. That is what separates the great players, of whatever sport, from the journeymen – time. Lionel Messi seems to have acres of space on the ball even when closely marked. Roger Federer moves like liquid and hits the ball effortlessly even when running at full tilt. Dan Carter makes room on a crowded pitch where none seems there. Richards appeared unhurried and relaxed at the crease, playing the correct shot – or no shot at all – to whatever ball was bowled at him. Relaxed? With someone trying to knock his head off? Well, that’s how it seemed.
And thirdly, all his strokes were straight out of the MCC coaching manual. In a manner of speaking, that is. I’ve never read the MCC book of coaching. Nor do I know anyone who has. It’s a bit of a cliché, really, used by cricketers, slightly tongue-in-cheek, to denote purity and orthodoxy of technique. Presumably Richards had been coached in the eternal verities of batsmanship from an early age but, even so, the technical perfection of each stroke was exceptional. Up and down the land, he had been constantly held up as a shining example of the correct way to bat and it was true. He had every stroke in the book and every one was a thing of elegance and refinement.
I had heard spectators purr with appreciation when he started to unfurl his cultured and polished shots – all round the wicket and all beautifully timed. When you watched him bat, you knew instinctively you were in the presence of greatness. Professional cricketers, by and large, are a hard-bitten lot, suspicious of anything flash, and not easily impressed. It takes something special to drag them away from a pack of cards in the dressing room to watch their colleagues batting. But whenever Richards took guard and played a few shots that indicated he was in the mood, all of us would be out there on the balcony watching in awe at the effortless manner in which he could dismantle a bowling attack.
That is not to say that he couldn’t throw orthodoxy to the wind and improvise when he wanted to. There was one occasion in the nets when he turned his bat around and challenged us to get him out with his using only the edge. Needless to say, he wasn’t playing Roberts on this occasion but even so, at the time, it seemed an outrageous proposal. We immediately took up the challenge. It would be exaggerating to say that he hit every ball in the middle – sorry, the edge – but we couldn’t get him out. And practising with him in the minutes before play, bowling a few looseners at him on the outfield to get his eye in, he would hit the ball straight back at you, no matter where you pitched it.
Short outside his imaginary off stump? He would swipe at it cross-batted and the ball would land, on the bounce, in your hands. Short outside leg stump? Before anyone had even heard of the reverse sweep, he would hit a double-handed backhand, straight back at you. Full pitch outside off stump? Most of us would gratefully lean into it and drive it over to the other side of the ground. And that would be the end of the practice because no one could be bothered to go and fetch the ball. But not Richards. He would turn his wrists at the last moment and send it straight back to you, again. And, most remarkable of all would be the one pitched up well outside leg stump. He would do a little shimmy and turn it into a straight drive – straight back at you, of course. No wonder there was usually a tussle to bowl at him. It was easy. You hardly had to move.
So he could rip up the rulebook if he was of a mind to do so and the situation warranted it. There is a famous photo of him in a Gillette Cup match against Lancashire at Bournemouth. He is executing an imperious cover drive. But take another look. The wicketkeeper, Farokh Engineer, is standing up to the wicket but is several feet outside the leg stump. What is going on? The Lancashire spinners had been firing it in at his leg stump, or even outside, to a packed leg-side field, in an attempt to curb his run-making. To counteract this ploy, he was dancing to leg and hitting the ball through the vacant off side. Pure genius. To say nothing of the impudence of it and the complete faith that he had in his exceptional abilities. Bowlers thought he was taking the mickey. He wasn’t. The bowler bowled the ball and he, the batsman, would hit it. Generally where he liked. He loved to bat. That was the essence of what he did, what had defined him since childhood.
There was no dancing to leg in this net practice, no extravagant shots, no experimentation or frivolousness. He was playing each ball on its merits. Occasionally he would push one into the covers off the back foot or steer it down through gully. Or he would lean on one whose line had strayed a fraction and ease it wide of mid-on. There were few front-foot drives. Roberts didn’t pitch it up very often but there was the occasional square cut, not a savage one but carefully played with exquisite timing. Four runs, without a doubt. But it was how he dealt with the short ball that impressed me most and long stuck in my mind. If it was very short, too short in effect, he would simply sway out of the line. If it was aimed at his chest, he would get up on his toes and simply play it down. He was never rushed, never flustered. It was almost as if he knew when Roberts was going to bowl a bouncer. Later, he said it was all to do with where the bowler’s head was going as he bowled the ball. If his head went low, it was because he was putting in that extra bit of effort needed to bowl the bouncer. So, it seemed he could look at the bowler’s head as well as the ball. Sometimes you just have to accept that the gods apportion sporting talent inequitably.
Who won the duel? I suppose you could call it a score draw. Roberts had not got him out. But nor had Richards got on top of him and hit him out of the firing line. Honours had been shared, they both might have reflected with satisfaction as they sipped their tea back in the dressing room. It had been a fascinating quarter of an hour, a real tussle between two superstars of the game. And no one, apart from their team-mates and half a dozen interested bystanders, had witnessed it. It was unlikely ever to be repeated, not because they were both in the same side but because one was West Indian and the other was South African.
And therein lies the tragedy that runs like a thread through this book. By this time, South Africa’s isolation from the international arena was, to all intents and purposes, complete and permanent. Barry Richards knew in his heart that he would never add to the pitifully small total of four Test matches that he had played for his country. For a year or two after bursting upon the world stage with a dazzling debut series against Australia in 1970, he had harboured hopes that the ban would be temporary and that his country would be welcomed back into the international fold. But slowly he had come to the dismal conclusion that it was never going to happen. He was condemned to the nomadic life of a professional cricketer, a hired hand wherever the money presented itself, without the excitement and glory of testing his skills against the world’s best at the highest level. A 15-minute stint in the nets facing Andy Roberts was no consolation.
For a while, he had managed to keep alight the flames of his ambition by striving for success in the Currie Cup for his native Natal and in the championship for his adopted county Hampshire. And there had been rewards too. Under his captaincy, Natal had won two Currie Cups and of course there was that famous win the previous year for Hampshire in the County Championship. That was all well and good. But it wasn’t Test cricket and Test cricket is what he craved. It was a bit like being perpetually on tour in provincial rep when all you want is to tread the boards in the West End. Great theatrical reputations are not made in little-known seaside resorts any more than cricket legends are forged in sleepy backwaters like Tunbridge Wells, Southend, Buxton and Basingstoke. ‘Basingstoke! I’ve still got a splinter in my foot from that damned wooden floor in the dressing room,’ he would complain, remembering his last visit to that outpost of Hampshire cricket. ‘And Southampton’, he grumbled, ‘it may be a bustling port and it may be the headquarters of this team but tell me, what is there to do in this dull, featureless city? It’s by the sea but I haven’t yet been able to find the beach.’ He tried to hide his creeping dissatisfaction and despair from his team-mates but sometimes it was difficult.
Nothing could have reminded him more plainly of what he was missing than what had happened a couple of months earlier in the season. He had scored a big hundred at Lord’s and in the eyes of those who witnessed it, including the long-suffering bowlers on the other side, it did not seem possible that anyone could have batted better that day. Even he had admitted that everything seemed to ping off the middle of the bat. And Old Father Time, up on top of the grandstand, was seen to nod his head in appreciation, and he had seen quite a few great innings on this famous old ground.
But it was no Test match, Lord’s was not full, there were no television cameras, he did not return to the pavilion to a standing ovation, the MCC members did not cheer him as he passed through the Long Room on his way back to the dressing room. It was a bitterly cold day in late April, the ground was deserted and the crack of leather on willow had echoed eerily around the empty, ghostly stands. MCC were playing in the traditional pipe opener to the season against the champion county, who were of course Hampshire. And it had not been a powder puff attack that MCC had chosen. Richards had put to the sword bowlers of the calibre of Hendrick, Jackman, Knight, Edmonds and Acfield.
Despite the rawness of the day, the Hampshire players had huddled together for warmth on the dressing room balcony, determined not to miss something special, a world-class batsman in the form of his life. I was there. I didn’t miss a ball. It was quite simply the greatest exhibition of batsmanship that I have ever seen. Mike Taylor, a team-mate and friend, turned to me as Richards executed yet another majestic stroke and said, ‘This is sheer box office, bloody marvellous. And no one’s here! It’s a tragedy.’
And it was too. That was the tragedy of Barry Richards.