Tony Fras­er

"Enough has been said about the panache and ex­hil­a­rat­ing stroke­play of West In­di­an bats­men; but not near­ly enough has been ob­served about the cre­ative minds that are able to con­ceive of crick­et West In­di­an style.

"If any demon­stra­tion of this ge­nius think­ing was need­ed, it was sup­plied in the last stroke of the in­nings. Bowl­ing at fast-medi­um, Mike Hen­drik ob­served the rules by pitch­ing right up be­tween mid­dle and off. Viv Richards re­act­ed not like the jun­gle cat, but rather through cog­ni­tive as­sess­ment of the sit­u­a­tion danced out­side of the off-stump and hit the ball in­to the crowd at square-leg. Cre­ative think­ing about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of such a shot is what dis­tin­guish­es the West In­di­an."

-Ju­ly 29, 1979, Guardian

I wrote that af­ter the fi­nal of the 1979 Pru­den­tial World Cup as a re­sponse to the no­tion that West In­di­an crick­eters had gained as­cen­dan­cy mere­ly be­cause of their ath­leti­cism achieved through their "days in the sun." It was al­so to tell the British press that the all-con­quer­ing West In­di­an team of skip­per Clive Lloyd had de­vel­oped the strat­e­gy of best util­is­ing the re­sources he could call on, in­clu­sive of four ir­re­sistible fast bowlers, to cre­ate the great­est crick­et team of all time.

I re­turn to the sub­ject as the now Sir Viv cel­e­brates his mile­stone 60th birth­day and as he com­mends the West In­di­an her­itage to this gen­er­a­tion. Mod­ern busi­ness gu­rus would find some fan­cy phrase such as "op­ti­mum use of hu­man cap­i­tal to achieve great­est ef­fec­tive­ness and with great­est ef­fi­cien­cies" to de­scribe the West In­di­an strat­e­gy of the glo­ry era.

In de­vel­op­ing the strat­e­gy, Lloyd went against the ac­cept­ed for­mu­la for pick­ing Test teams, that be­ing two open­ers, four mid­dle or­der bats­men, a wick­et­keep­er/bats­man, a bowl­ing all- rounder, two fast bowlers, and a spin­ner.

In­stead, Lloyd fol­lowed in the mould of ar­guably the great­est thinker/re­gion­al­ist/team-builder, Frank Wor­rell, and went for the re­sources con­tained in the West In­di­an re­source bank of the time. He as­sem­bled four of the great­est fast bowlers of all time; two ul­tra-at­tack­ing open­ers, in­clu­sive of per­haps the most nat­ur­al and fear­less hook­er (Roy Fred­er­icks), fol­lowed by IVA Richards, three oth­er bats­men, in­clud­ing him­self and the qui­et sta­bil­is­ing force of Lar­ry Gomes; and the sound wick­et-keep­ing skills of Mur­ray, (lat­er Du­jon) team-man and ad­vis­er.

The mil­i­tan­cy, bold­ness, and cre­ative spir­it of Vi­vian were cen­tral to the team. He was not mere­ly the great­est bats­man of that age (many would ar­gue of any age), but he was the quin­tes­sen­tial West In­di­an who be­lieved in him­self and knew he had to ad­vance the cause of his peo­ple.

Richards has said that when he walked to the wick­et he felt he was go­ing out to rep­re­sent the mar­gin­alised of his peo­ple cut­ting sug­ar cane. At the Oval in Eng­land, Vi­vian knew that he had to al­low his bel­liger­ent bat, his sure-hand­ed field­ing, ag­gres­sive and strate­gic cap­tain­cy (when in that role) to speak for the gen­er­a­tions of West In­di­ans who had come to Eng­land to earn a liv­ing, get an ed­u­ca­tion for them­selves and chil­dren, and were fac­ing sec­ond class sta­tus.

"West In­di­ans crowd­ing to Tests bring with them the whole past his­to­ry and fu­ture hopes of the is­lands...what do they know of crick­et who on­ly crick­et know"- CLR James in his mas­ter­piece of crick­et lit­er­a­ture-Be­yond a Bound­ary-1963, un­doubt­ed­ly the great­est book ever writ­ten on crick­et. Richards un­der­stands the prob­lems of to­day.

"In­di­vid­u­als have now lost most of the con­scious­ness of what play­ing for the West In­dies was all about. You on­ly had to come to Eng­land to see what our crick­et meant to the West In­di­ans who were work­ing in the bus de­pots, and all those oth­ers who were strug­gling against the bu­reau­cra­cy of the sys­tem at the time. Crick­et was a unit­ing force in our quest for a Caribbean iden­ti­ty," said the great man to Guardian writer Kit­to John­son in a 2010 in­ter­view which was car­ried again last Sun­day in ho­n­our of Sir Viv's birth­day.

John­son was grate­ful to Sir Vi­vian Isaac for hav­ing tak­en the time to speak to him back then. "It is a true mea­sure of the man, though, that amidst a gath­er­ing of in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia at the Ex­cel Cen­tre in east Lon­don, he still af­fords am­ple time to a novice jour­nal­ist of very lit­tle re­pute. They cer­tain­ly do not make them like him any­more."

He did so, Kit­to,, be­cause he want­ed to send a mes­sage to his peo­ple in the is­lands and con­ti­nen­tal Guyana. Most of all he want­ed to tell young West In­di­an crick­eters that "bling" is "boo;" that what mat­ters is com­mit­ment to the West In­di­an tra­di­tion and to the West In­di­an na­tion of to­day at­tempt­ing to make it in the world of to­mor­row.

"I struc­tured my whole ap­proach to the game on the lega­cy of West In­dies crick­et. That ap­proach wasn't just fo­cused on those play­ers who scored the most runs, or those who took the most wick­ets, but al­so on play­ers such as Learie Con­stan­tine, who strug­gled to make it in Eng­land and laid a path for the rest of us," said Richards to John­son.

To the crick­eters of to­day-Sam­my, Bravos, Gayle... oops for­got that the WICB con­tin­ues to be­have like our old colo­nial mas­ters, Ed­wards (two), Nar­ine, et al-if Viv is too far a mem­o­ry for you to con­jure, take guid­ance from Chan­der­paul of your time: crick­et dis­plays our civil­i­sa­tion to the world.

Un­der­stand that when you play against the Aus­tralians they will not re­cede one inch be­cause they have the blood of Vic­tor Trump, Don­ald Brad­man, Bill "Tiger" O'Reil­ly, Neil Har­vey, the Chap­pell broth­ers, De­nis Lille and Shane Warne stir­ring in their veins. You have to play as if your life and the lives of all of us "down here in these tiny is­lands" de­pend on how you con­front the chal­lenge and face the world.

But all of us in this caul­dron of West In­di­an­ness thrown to­geth­er by cap­i­tal­ist ex­pan­sion, greed, chi­canery, those who were des­per­ate for a new life out­side Afri-ca, In­dia, Chi­na, Eu­rope, North and South Amer­i­ca, the Mid­dle East, take note that Vi­vian Isaac Richards on his 60th birth­day be­lieves there re­mains hope for an­oth­er bold era in West In­di­an crick­et to arise.