Leg­endary for­mer West In­dies cap­tain Sir Vi­vian "Viv" Richards says he nev­er chased for­mer T&T open­ing bats­man Richard Gabriel off the field dur­ing a Ben­son and Hedges Lim­it­ed Overs match in Aus­tralia in 1984.

The "Mas­ter Blaster" has been ma­ligned, cursed and abused by lo­cal crick­et fans who saw the in­ci­dent as an at­tack on their own.

The episode oc­curred at Perth in a tied en­counter be­tween West In­dies and Aus­tralia. Clive Lloyd was the cap­tain but Richards was hold­ing on for him when the in­ci­dent oc­curred.

Lar­ry Gomes, the Trinida­di­an part-time off-spin­ner, was op­er­at­ing at the time and bowled a short de­liv­ery out­side off-stump to Ke­pler Wes­sels who was cut down to deep point. Gabriel gin­ger­ly run­ning around close to the bound­ary failed to pick up the ball and it can­noned in­to the fence.

"I nev­er sent Gabriel off the field be­cause I want­ed to dis­ci­pline him as the com­men­ta­tors said at the point in time," re­calls Richards.

"Gabriel in­di­cat­ed that he had a ham­string prob­lem so I point that he could go off the field af­ter that ef­fort.

"I think Gabriel has fi­nal­ly been able to come clean with the in­ci­dent and tell peo­ple what re­al­ly hap­pened on that oc­ca­sion."

The match was the sec­ond game of the World Se­ries fi­nals and end­ed in a tie. Tele­vi­sion re­plays of the in­ci­dent show Gabriel point­ing to his right ham­string af­ter re­cov­er­ing the ball. Gus Lo­gie, his fel­low Trinida­di­an, re­placed him on the field for the re­main­der of the match.

Af­ter the in­ci­dent, fans at the Queen's Park Oval in St Clair, Port-of-Spain, re­fused to give Richards a good re­cep­tion un­til they con­sumed their choice bev­er­age and the An­tiguan was mur­der­ing the bowl­ing of the op­po­si­tion.

There will al­ways be "talk" of Viv not lik­ing Trinida­di­ans and this did not go down well with the bat­ting ge­nius as he showed oth­er­wise on many oc­ca­sions.

My own in­ter­ac­tion with Viv showed his true colours.

Back in 2016 while cov­er­ing the West In­dies ver­sus Pak­istan Test se­ries in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (UAE), Viv would in­sist that I take a ride back to my ho­tel with the trans­port that was pro­vid­ed for him by the tele­vi­sion com­pa­ny he was work­ing for, dur­ing the se­ries.

We spent close to a month in the UAE and grew very close as I was able to get to know the man bet­ter and un­der­stand his think­ing and meth­ods. One night af­ter play had end­ed in the day/night Test be­tween West In­dies and Pak­istan at the Dubai In­ter­na­tion­al Sta­di­um, I told him that I would see him the next day, as I was about to call a taxi. He called me in­to his van as he had been do­ing every day of the Test match.

On that evening, an­oth­er Trinida­di­an jour­nal­ist Fazeer Mo­hammed and part of the tele­vi­sion crew had stayed back to com­plete his as­sign­ments so he did not leave with the oth­er van as he usu­al­ly had done, to­geth­er with for­mer Pak­istan open­ing bats­man Rameez Ra­ja.

I didn't go to Viv's van be­cause it was filled, as dai­ly, it was oc­cu­pied by the dri­ver, Viv, Ian Bish­op and for­mer Pak­istan fast bowler Waqar You­nis.

Viv told me: "Get in­to the van." To which, I men­tioned to him that the ve­hi­cle was filled to ca­pac­i­ty. He told the dri­ver to open the back of the ve­hi­cle and com­ment­ed: "I will not leave my Caribbean broth­er alone."

Viv said he would sit in the booth of the Land­cruis­er just to ac­com­mo­date me. When the dri­ver opened the back, we re­alised there was a pull-down seat in the ve­hi­cle. How­ev­er, Mo­hammed vol­un­teered to sit in the back as he was small­er in-built and off we went.

This showed his love for his Caribbean broth­er, a Trinida­di­an at that, and he was very much will­ing to as­sist me.

On that tour, we sat to­geth­er and spoke a lot about pol­i­tics. We watched clips of his mas­ter­ful bat­ting and he open­ly shared his feel­ings to­wards his Caribbean peo­ple and the deep pas­sion with which he views the re­gion.

It was on this tour, he re­vealed the in­ci­dent with Gabriel and it was ob­vi­ous that the en­tire episode had af­fect­ed him be­cause the truth was not spo­ken.

On the in­ter­na­tion­al scene, Viv is one of the few for­mer West In­dies crick­eters that will make sure you are com­fort­able when far away from home. He al­ways says that "when we are far away from home we must stick to­geth­er as Caribbean peo­ple and en­sure that we make life easy for each oth­er."

Viv has al­ways been a voice for the voice­less. He was the one who came out open­ly and sug­gest­ed to York­shire Coun­ty Crick­et Club back in the day that they look at some of the young Asians who were very tal­ent­ed in the Head­in­g­ley area. He was told by an of­fi­cial that they couldn't han­dle the smell of all that cur­ry in the dress­ing room. Viv hat­ed this com­ment so much that when the of­fi­cial passed on, he re­fused to even at­tend his fu­ner­al.

The leg­end Viv has sat with Kings, pres­i­dents, prime min­is­ters, and top celebri­ties, ex­ud­ing a class that is equal or even above them. Long live, the "King of the Caribbean".