WisdenExtraEngland v West Indies

Tale of a trophy

The independent voice of cricket since 1864

Eagar’s Eye Patrick Eagar, the doyen of cricket photographers, has been capturing the essence of the game for almost 50 years. In that time he’s taken more than 750,000 images and attended well over 300 Tests. He’s long had an eye for the verve and exuberance of West Indies cricket – and in the pages that follow selects some of his favourite photographs.

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No. 3, May 2012

Philip Larkin reckoned “sexual intercourse/began in nineteen sixty-three/(which was rather late for me)”. But the chances are Wisden was too busy that summer to notice.

In a move that these days might have struggled to get past the marketeers, MCC and the West Indian board smiled benignly on a suggestion from John Wisden & Co, and – in honour of our centenary – agreed that all Test series between the sides from 1963 onwards would be contested for the Wisden Trophy.

Frank Worrell’s West Indians promptly beat Ted Dexter’s Englishmen 3–1. Colin Cowdrey’s team won it back in 1967-68, but West Indies reclaimed the trophy in 1973 – and held on until 2000, when the image of Nasser Hussain brandishing it at The Oval made up for the tears he shed there the previous year against New Zealand.

Whether West Indies can reclaim the Wisden Trophy (right) in the series starting tomorrow at Lord’s is a moot point. In this, the third edition of our online magazine, the Caribbean commentator Fazeer Mohammed laments the factors that have compounded West Indies’ decline and fall. The prognosis is not good.

Forgive us, then, for the nostalgia. Mike Atherton’s account of facing Courtney

Walsh at Sabina Park in 1993-94 is spine-chilling stuff, while Patrick Eagar’s favourite West Indian photos bring to life an extraordinary era. Tyers and Beach have some fun with – inevitably, perhaps – Chris Gayle, while Simon Wilde looks ahead at a testing summer for Andrew Strauss.

We also have a treat for those of you of a superstitious bent: novelist Howard Jacobson’s speech at last month’s Wisden dinner is a gem.

Finally, a reminder of two competitions as we gear up for our 150th edition in 2013. The first invites readers to claim their own page in the Almanack: the best piece of cricket writing (between 480 and 520 words and previously unpublished) wins the prize.

The second is our Moments in Time competition, in which we ask you to guess our choice of cricket’s ten most seminal moments since Wisden first

appeared in 1864. For more details, please visit our website, www.wisden.com, and click on the Wisden Competitions link on the left.

Our website also contains our smart new Records section, which is updated regularly and includes more stats and numbers than we could ever dream of fitting into a book.

Do let us know what you think: feedback@wisden.com.

Lawrence Booth

1Wisden EXTRA • England v West Indies© John Wisden & Company Limited 2012 Wisden is a trademark of John Wisden & Company Limited

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In the line of duty: Mike Atherton does his best to deal with Courtney Walsh’s chin music at Sabina Park in 1993-94. Pic: Getty Images

The former England captain Mike Atherton on the suffocating experience of facing the great West Indies fast bowlers in their prime

Coming up for air

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It would be tempting, especially for those batsmen with a tendency to glorify the past, to remember every hour, every session, every day and every Test match against the great West Indies teams as a veteran might remember his days under heavy bombardment on the front line. Tempting – but wrong.

If those batsmen might be likened to a seal swimming under an ice cap desperately searching for a hole through which to find air, then even in West Indies’ greatest years – which might be framed around the twin whitewashes of England in 1984 and 1985-86 – there were often patches of play where a batsman could get to the surface and grab a little breathing space.

Eldine Baptiste, medium-pace in any era, and off-spinner Roger Harper played every Test match of the 1984 series in England, both offering respite after the onslaught from Joel Garner, Michael Holding and Malcolm Marshall. Harper also played in the last two Tests of the 1985-86 series, although by that stage England’s batsmen had been softened up brutally and were ripe for plucking.

Even when the fabled fast-bowling production line was at its most efficient, there were anomalies: Milton Small – remember him? – played in the Lord’s Test of 1984, and to these youthful eyes he was far from quick; later, the Benjamins, Kenny and Winston, were nicknamed the “Benjamin sisters” in the islands, because their express days were few and far between. It wasn’t always trench warfare.

It could be, though, and nothing tested you more as a batsman than the sessions when, with juices flowing and a crowd to egg them on, the West Indian quick bowlers decided to play some of their chin music. If this happened to be in the Caribbean, at one of those intimate venues such as the Bourda in Georgetown, Guyana, or the Recreation ground in St John’s, Antigua – where you could almost touch the energy of the crowd – then the experience was heightened by an atmosphere that verged on frenzied. Unless you were in Jamaica, where the mood was downright hostile...

In my mind’s eye I can see Courtney Walsh now: turning anti-clockwise at the end of his run at the opposite end from the players’ pavilion at Sabina Park, thousands chanting and dancing behind wired fencing in the background, a whiff of marijuana hanging in the air; Jimmy Adams at short leg urging on his fellow Jamaican (“C’mon, Cuddy, c’mon!”); Richie Richardson at third slip shrieking, “He doesn’t like it, Cuddy, he doesn’t like it!”; the fierce sun beating down on a pitch so shiny that you could see your reflection, so hard that the spikes on the soles of your feet tinkled on its surface rather than tore into its flesh.

Then Walsh running in, knees pumping high, which – for a batsman – was always a bad sign; both hands holding the ball at his groin, so that his shoulders rolled rhythmically with each lengthening stride, which was another bad sign, since it signified his rhythm was good and his intent obvious. Then the crowd became silent, or at least my concentration silenced it, as I zoned in

on the ball for a few seconds only, knowing that, if I didn’t, it might be the last chance I had. For those moments, senses were heightened and life seemed, well, interesting.

Time and again, as I remember it, short balls trampolined off the slick surface. Time and again, evasive action was sought, the speed and hostility of the bowling compelling a defensive, protective mindset, runs the last thing on my mind. The wicketkeeper, Junior Murray, was standing so far back that, when I ducked, I had time to turn and still see the ball thudding into his gloves. Cue more shrieking from Adams and Richardson, and more wild reaction from the crowd. West Indian crowds loved a bouncer. Only when I was out (fending a short ball to short leg) and able to watch from the sidelines did I really appreciate the pure, naked speed of Walsh that day. “If you can face that,” said our coach Keith Fletcher, who – having faced Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson in their prime – was no stranger to quick bowling, “you can face anything.” It gave me a confidence, of sorts.

It was the First Test of the 1993-94 tour of the West Indies – my first in charge outside England. Walsh’s long barrage – so long, in fact, that he kept feigning to the crowd that he was taking his sweater, only for their reaction to encourage him to keep going for one more, and then one more, and then one more, until his spell lasted well into double figures – was not a chance occurrence. It fitted snugly into that well-known rite of passage for any new captain against West Indies, based on Clive Lloyd’s dictum that “if you cut off the head, the rest will fall”.

Walsh did cut off the head, and the rest did fall –but, I like to think, not ignobly. There is a wonderful photograph of this particular battle: as you can see, I am taking evasive action with both feet off the floor, knees bent at 90 degrees, albeit in what looks like a decent sideways-on position, with my hands lowered in protection not of my body but my wicket, my head snapping back to avoid the ball passing through at cheekbone height. In the background there is a Union Jack, to remind me just why I put myself through it.

I faced many of the fine West Indian fast bowlers in the decade or so that I played for England: Patrick Patterson, for example, for a short time possibly the quickest and most frightening of them all (the only one Graham Gooch thought might really hurt him) and Marshall, possibly the greatest, certainly the most versatile of the lot. There were a few I missed, such as Andy Roberts, Holding and Garner, all three of whom bow to no one in the fast-bowling stakes. But the two I always think of, since I never played in a West Indies series without encountering them, were Walsh and Curtly Ambrose.

What a magnificent pair of fast bowlers they were. Both were quick, very quick, in their heyday, and good enough later on for the drop in pace not to result in a

continued overleaf

I was really pleased with this shot. Keith Boyce was one of the breed of West Indian county bowlers who really got airborne, and this just seemed to capture his energy. It was a Championship match at Chelmsford in 1971, and Boyce was tearing in for Essex. But it was Boycs and not Boyce who came off best on this occasion: 233 out of Yorkshire’s 421 for four declared. In those days it was a faff to duplicate transparencies, and I sent off the original to a magazine sponsored by Texaco. When it came back it was so badly scratched I couldn’t use it again – at least not until a digital scan and the magic of Photoshop. It’s still not perfect – you can see some scratches to the right of Boycott’s head – and I’ve not bought a drop of Texaco petrol since.”

1Eagar’s Eye

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loss of effectiveness. Walsh was awkward: his angle, wide on the crease, forced you to play at deliveries you really ought to have left alone, and his flexible wrist allowed for a wicked change of pace – surely the most dangerous thing above all for a batsman. Ambrose was more linear, but his height brought disconcerting bounce and he hated giving away runs. He was always, as they say, at you.

Most of all they were ferocious competitors, carrying the team through the last of the glory days and into a dignified twilight zone, so that complete darkness could fall only once they had departed the scene. They were competitors of the best kind, too: utterly fair, realising that there was no need to taint their trade with trash-talk. It would have demeaned them, the greatness of their team and their craft.

Playing against West Indies forced batsmen to look deep into themselves to find courage – which is, perhaps, its true definition. It became less of a technical and more of a physical and mental challenge, something visceral and elemental, without which Test cricket is a lesser game. When they scented a weakness there was a

ruthlessness, especially under Viv Richards, that was raw in its intensity. And I say that as someone who caught the tail-end of the storm.

Having seen bits of footage, having read reports, knowing some of the characters involved on both sides, I suspect that those England batsmen who toured the Caribbean in 1985-86 found themselves in the very eye of that storm. Patterson, brooding, on debut and physically magnificent, on a hard, ridged pitch at Sabina Park, must have been about as difficult an assignment as a batsman could be given. And then Marshall, Garner and Holding. The pockets of air were there – Richards and Richie Richardson bowled an over each in the match – but they were desperately hard to find. Drowning was inevitable.

Mike Atherton is the cricket correspondent of The Times and a commentator for Sky Sports. In 27 Tests against West Indies he scored 1,587 runs at 31.74, with four hundreds. That day in Jamaica, he made 28 in seven minutes short of two hours

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Eagar’s Eye 2This was The Oval at the end of the long hot summer of ’76. Before the Test the experts were adamant: the pitch was as dead as a doornail and no bowler was going to get any wickets. Well, they were almost right. No one managed more than three – apart from Mikey Holding, who took 14. Even though Viv Richards and Dennis Amiss both hit double-hundreds, the game was all about Holding. In the end it was an absolute massacre – a tribute to Holding at his very best. It was the “grovel” summer, and so Tony Greig’s wicket was a special one. The celebrations were quite something.

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It is one of the truisms of sport that it is best not to look too far ahead – but it is one Andrew Strauss and the ECB may have been guilty of forgetting.

Ever since the urn was retained in Australia two winters ago the England captain and his employers have had it in mind that he should lead England in the back-to-back Ashes series of 2013 and 2013-14. After seeing in the New Year with the victorious team in Sydney, ECB chairman Giles Clarke declared in essence that Strauss could have the job as long as he wanted.

There is no great surprise in this. Should Strauss retain the Ashes on home soil, then successfully defend them Down Under, he would be the first England leader since W. G. Grace to have four Ashes wins alongside his name.

It is an understandable ambition. It is equally understandable that Strauss’s players should want him to stay in charge, and that the ECB are ready to do all in their power to keep together the management axis of Strauss and team director Andy Flower through to 2014. Flower’s reward for the last Ashes triumph was a deal to keep him in post beyond that date.

Everyone wants it, but it will only happen if the process remains solid, which means Strauss’s team keep winning and his own bat produces runs. And it is the runs that have become the real concern. Only a gritty half-century during the series-levelling victory in Colombo in April cut short a growing media debate – led by the sharp tongue of former captain Bob Willis – that he was falling critically short.

Until Strauss gets back to making the hundreds that were once his stock-in-trade, it won’t take much for the issue to resurface. Indeed, a double failure against Durham last month – bowled each time by Graham Onions, for nought and six – soon had Strauss-watchers on early-season alert, and saw the first ex-England captain (Michael Vaughan) wheeled out to

give his verdict. It looks like being an eventful summer for Strauss and his crown.

There is an assumption that England will see off West Indies, who haven’t won a major series away from home since 1995. But they are an improved outfit and capable of causing embarrassment, particularly if conditions favour the ball. Kemar Roach, Fidel Edwards and Ravi Rampaul offer aggression, speed and swing, while Shane Shillingford is a high-bouncing off-spinner with the weapons to hurt a left-hander such as Strauss. England should win the series but it cannot be assumed that Strauss will fill his boots.

South Africa offer a challenge of an altogether different magnitude. Their attack – Dale Steyn, Vernon Philander, Morne Morkel and leg-spinner Imran Tahir – rivals England’s for potency, and South Africa have the incentive of knowing they can leapfrog England at the top of the rankings.

To add further spice, Graeme Smith has, with big scores, brought down the England captain on each of his two previous visits: a double-century at Edgbaston in 2003 triggered Nasser Hussain’s resignation, and an unbeaten 154 on the same ground five years later secured both the series and a lachrymose farewell from Vaughan.

Whether Smith can do it again will inevitably form part of the media narrative to the series and ensure that the spotlight stays firmly on Strauss’s progress.

Results will be as important as runs. Recent talk about Strauss’s future acquired momentum because England lost four Tests in a row. If he averages 25 this summer but England beat West Indies and South Africa he will survive. If he averages 25 and they lose to South Africa he may not.

Vaughan defended Strauss after the Durham debacle, saying captaincy was about man-management as well as runs, and no one doubted Strauss’s abilities in that sphere. But he conceded that Strauss needed a big score against West Indies.

The summer ahead is likely to determine whether the Strauss–Flower axis is still in place for next year’s Ashes. Simon Wilde looks at the pressures on the England captain

Strauss under stress

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Strauss has insisted he is not in particularly bad form. He may be right. Of his last 16 Test innings, he has batted for at least an hour in all but three. The problem is, he has fallen nine times between 16 and 32.

This is what happens with long-serving captains, particularly English ones. In a process that is almost too subtle for them to detect, the job rubs away at the fabric of their game so that they no longer have sufficient energy or concentration to make the big scores of old (even Viv Richards managed only two centuries in his last 28 Tests as West Indies captain).

Strauss must fight not only the effects of three arduous years in the job but the fact that he will be 36 by the next Ashes. Not many English cricketers, who have been tied to long seasons of domestic cricket (not to mention tours) since their late teens, are still at their best by that age.

Whatever his denials about having been close to giving up, Strauss must have contemplated quitting had the Colombo Test been lost. His subsequent admission that he hated his players having to defend him in Sri Lanka (and boy did they defend him, with Graeme Swann calling the media coverage “a witch-hunt”) only confirmed how uncomfortable the situation was.

The words he used in Galle when asked whether he was still the man to take England forward (“Questions about my position are just not something I’m going to answer in the middle of the series”) eerily echoed his reply to a similar question after the team’s World Cup exit (“I just don’t think that now is the time to answer that question”). And, of course, he did indeed step down from the one-day captaincy.

Giving up that job, against England’s wishes, was arguably his biggest mistake. It messed up his schedule – leaving him begging a game from Somerset last year when he was without first-class cricket for several weeks, a situation that could arise again this summer – and also detached him from regular contact with Flower. “When you give up one form of the captaincy, you give something away,” Vaughan said.

No one in English cricket wants Strauss to go. He has pedigree as a leader and knows how to get the best out of his players. As Clarke suggested, the call will be his.

A combination of a Test century this summer and victory over South Africa (in a series in which Strauss should win his 100th cap) would probably be enough to cement his place for the Ashes. But if neither materialises, he could quit. He is conditioned to doing what is best for the team, and if the results or the runs aren’t coming he may feel he is the one who should take responsibility.

But England’s best chance of parading the urn again the next time they are in Sydney is if he remains in charge.

Simon Wilde is the cricket correspondent of the Sunday Times

t

Malcolm Marshall – a hero for Hampshire as well as West Indies. I took this during the Third Test of that ’84 Blackwash series, and you can clearly see he’s bowling with his left arm in plaster after breaking his thumb on the first day. He didn’t just bowl – he destroyed England, taking seven for 53. (He also hit a one-handed boundary when he batted!) Many rate him the best of the lot, and I’d certainly put him up there with Holding as the most talented of the West Indian quicks of his generation.

Eagar’s Eye

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Wisden EXTRA • England v West Indies

Wisden EXTRA • England v West Indies

From the Archive Wisden 1951

West Indies fully merited their first Test victory in England, which, to their undisguised delight, was gained at the headquarters of cricket. In batting, bowling and fielding they were clearly the superior side, with Ramadhin this time the more successful of the two 20-year-old spin bowlers who during the 1950 summer wrought such destruction among English batsmen. In the match Ramadhin took 11 and Valentine seven wickets.

England, already without Compton, suffered further setbacks before the game began by the withdrawal through injury of Simpson and Bailey. In view of heavy rain on Friday, the selectors gambled on the pitch being helpful to spin by choosing Wardle, left-arm slow, to replace Bailey, but instead the turf played easily from the start, and Yardley found himself with three slow bowlers who turned the ball from leg; he would have wished to bowl all of them from the same end. The teams were presented to the King just before the start when 30,500 were inside the ground, the gates having been closed.

Although Wardle took a wicket with his first ball in Test cricket in England by getting rid of Stollmeyer at 37, West Indies were so much on top that shortly after four o’clock the total stood at 233 for two. Brilliant strokeplay came from Worrell, who drove delightfully and made some astonishing late cuts, and Weekes, whose 63 in 90 minutes contained ten fours – but Rae, in much less spectacular manner, performed even more important work for West Indies.

A fine ball by Bedser which swung away and broke back after pitching shattered the wicket of Weekes at 233, and from that point England fought back splendidly. Clever slow bowling by Jenkins, in particular, raised England hopes after tea. In a 20-minute spell of seven overs he sent back Walcott, Rae and Gomez. Rae, who was badly missed in the gully off Bedser when 79,

made no other mistake during a patient innings lasting four hours 40 minutes, in which he scored 106 out of 273. At times he appeared content to continue a passive defensive policy, but occasionally he would abandon these tactics, as when in one over he hit Jenkins for three of his 15 fours. Largely through the inspiration of Yardley, England atoned for earlier catching errors by first-class ground fielding, and in view of the nature of the pitch they could feel satisfied with their performance of taking seven wickets for 320 runs on the opening day. Bedser was the most consistent and reliable bowler, but luck went against him, especially when he saw two catches missed off him during a fine spell of 22 overs for 17 runs with the new ball.

No more than ten minutes were required to finish the innings on Monday, but England’s reply was disappointing in the extreme. Neither Hutton nor Washbrook was in his best form, but both played well enough to take the score to 62 before Hutton dashed down the pitch and was stumped yards out. This began a rout which was checked only by spirited hitting by Wardle, who punched six fours and took part with Berry in the second-highest stand of the innings, 29 for the last wicket.

No blame could be attached to the pitch. It gave slow bowlers a little help, but only to those who used real finger spin as did Ramadhin and Valentine. Ramadhin bowled with the guile of a veteran. He pitched a tantalising length, bowled straight at the wicket and spun enough to beat the bat. No English batsman showed evidence of having mastered the problems of deciding which way Ramadhin would spin and he was too quick through the air for any but the most nimble-footed to go down to meet him on the half-volley with any consistency. Valentine lent able support, but the English batsmen might, with profit, have tackled him

In the first Test of the 1950 series, the West Indian spinners Sonny Ramadhin and Alf Valentine had shared 15 wickets in a losing cause. But at Lord’s, Reg Hayter saw them bowl their side to a famous victory, their first in England

Second Test, at Lord’s, June 24, 26, 27, 28, 29. West Indies won by 326 runs. Toss: West Indies. Test debut: W. G. A. Parkhouse.

Those two little pals of mine...

Scorecard: click here

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more boldly. England’s score was their lowest for a completed innings in a home Test against West Indies.

Thanks to a remarkably sustained spell of bowling by Jenkins, England prevented West Indies in their second innings from placing themselves in an impregnable position until the association of Walcott and Gomez. Previously Weekes, Worrell and Stollmeyer gave another exhibition of masterly strokeplay, but with only a 20-minute rest Jenkins kept one end going from the start until tea, and deserved the reward of the four wickets which fell to him.

Unfortunately for England a second series of fielding blunders played into the hands of West Indies at a time when a slight prospect of victory seemed to exist. The most expensive of these occurred when Walcott had scored nine. He was missed at slip off Edrich, who bowled with plenty of life in using the new ball. Before England met with another success Walcott and Gomez put on 211, beating the record for the sixth wicket in England–West Indies Tests established a few weeks earlier at Manchester by Evans and T. E. Bailey. Walcott and Gomez also set up a record Test stand for any West Indies wicket in England. When Goddard declared, setting England 601 to get to win with nearly two days to play, Walcott, the six-foot-two wicketkeeper-batsman, was only one short of the highest score by a West Indies player in Test cricket in England, 169 not out by G. Headley in 1933. As usual, Walcott scored the majority

Wisden EXTRA • England v West Indies 9

of his runs by drives, even against the good-length or shorter ball, and leg sweeps. He hit 24 fours. Gomez did not put such force into his strokes, but be provided an admirable and valuable foil.

Two batsmen distinguished themselves in England’s second innings. For five hours and a half Washbrook withstood the attack, and his only mistake occurred when, at 93, he gave a hard chance to mid-on. Otherwise he batted excellently; although for the most part refusing to take a risk, he hit one six and 17 fours.

The only other success was Parkhouse, who signalised his first Test with a very good innings, in which he showed encouraging confidence and a variety of strokes until he hit a full toss straight to silly mid-off in the last over of the fourth day when wanting only two runs for 50. This mistake came at a time when thoughts were raised that Washbrook might be capable of saving the match if someone could stay with him. Hutton again was dismissed curiously. He made no stroke at a ball which came with Valentine’s arm and hit the middle stump.

England started the last day with six wickets left and 383 runs required to win, but when Ramadhin yorked Washbrook, who did not add to his score, the end was in sight and nothing happened to check the inevitable defeat. Ramadhin and Valentine were again the chief executioners. During the five days the full attendance was 112,000.

Richie Richardson: the man who came after Viv. They’re both Antiguans, and Richie did all the right things as captain and batsman. But while Viv was cool and preoccupied with image, Richie was gentle, charming and laid back. If he ever did bat in a helmet, I don’t remember it. For me he’s always in his floppy hat – as he is here, against England at Bridgetown in 1993-94.

Eagar’s Eye 4

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West Indies still lead England 53–43 in Tests, though domination has swung from England to the Caribbean – and back – over the years:”

England West Indies Drawn

1928–1959-60 15 10 15

1963–1997-98 13 41 27

2000–2009 15 2 7

Overall 43 53 49

At Sabina Park in 1930 Andy Sandham made 325, England’s highest score against West Indies. It came in the last of Sandham’s 14 Tests, and is still the best by anyone in their final Test:

325 Andy Sandham, England v West Indies at Kingston 1929-30

266 Bill Ponsford, Australia v England at The Oval 1934

258Seymour Nurse, West Indies v New Zealand at Christchurch

1968-69

206Aravinda de Silva, Sri Lanka v Bangladesh at Colombo (PSS)

2002

201* Jason Gillespie, Australia v Bangladesh at Chittagong 2005-06

That match at Kingston was a timeless Test, finishing as a draw only when England had to head home after the eighth and ninth days were washed out. West Indies, set 836 – the highest target in Tests – ended on 408 for five.

Like Sandham, Wilfred Rhodes was playing his last Test: aged 52 years and 165 days on that final day, he is comfortably the oldest person to play Test cricket.

In 1933, England selected leg-spinner Charles “Father” Marriott for the Oval Test. He took five for 37 and six for 59. But that was it – he was never picked again as his teaching duties at Dulwich College took up most of his

time. No one else has taken more than seven wickets in their only Test appearance.

Few have had a more spectacular start to a Test career than slow left-armer Alf Valentine. In the 1950 Old Trafford Test he took five wickets before lunch on the first day – the only West Indian bowler to have done so.

In the celebrated 1950 Lord’s Test, England went 92 balls without scoring a run off the bat, believed to be a record. Shortly before West Indies won, England’s tailenders Johnny Wardle and Roly Jenkins batted out 15 consecutive maidens.

In England’s second innings at Edgbaston in 1957, Sonny Ramadhin bowled 98 overs, a Test (and first-class) record.

In 1976, Viv Richards dominated the Test series in England, scoring 829 runs despite missing a match through injury. His record of 1,710 runs in a calendar year stood stood until 2006.

Tests Runs 100s Year

Mohammad Yousuf (P) 11 1,788 9 2006

Viv Richards (WI) 11 1,710 7 1976

Graeme Smith (SA) 15 1,656 6 2008

Sachin Tendulkar (I) 14 1,562 7 2010

Sunil Gavaskar (I) 18 1,555 5 1979

Ricky Ponting (A) 15 1,544 6 2005

Ricky Ponting (A) 11 1,503 6 2003

The second day of the 2000 Lord’s Test between England and West Indies was the first time a single day had included all four innings. It has since happened twice: New Zealand v India at Hamilton (2002-03), and South Africa v Australia at Cape Town (2011-12).

When England and West Indies first met, in 1928, Percy Chapman’s England ran away with the Test series 3–0. Benedict Bermange unearths some statistical jewels from the encounters that followed

One hell of a one-Test wonder

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What a captain. The job of uniting the West Indian team must be one of the toughest jobs in the game, but gosh, what Clive Lloyd did for Caribbean cricket was just amazing. No one else has harnessed all that skill and energy to half as much effect. Here he’s signing autographs at the end of the 1984 Blackwash. He’s another kind man. Just recently I was asked to take his portrait on the Millennium Bridge, near St Paul’s in London. There was an African-Caribbean guy on the bridge begging and Clive gave him a few quid. He looked up – and his jaw hit the floor when he saw who’d given him the money.

Eagar’s Eye

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Shivnarine Chanderpaul has played in more Test defeats than anyone:

Played Won Lost Drawn

Shivnarine Chanderpaul (WI) 140 29 66 45

Brian Lara (WI) 131 32 63 36

Alec Stewart (E) 133 39 54 40

Sachin Tendulkar (I) 188 63 54 71

Rahul Dravid (I) 164 56 49 59

Tim Bresnan, however, has yet to experience defeat – or even a draw – in his 11 Tests. Only two players

have enjoyed more successive victories at the start of their career:

15 Adam Gilchrist (A) 1999–2001

13 Stuart Clark (A) 2006–2008

11 Tim Bresnan (E) 2009–2012

10 Eldine Baptiste (WI) 1983–1990

10 Brett Lee (A) 1999–2001

10 Thilan Samaraweera (SL) 2001–2002

Benedict Bermange is the cricket statistician for Sky Sports

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For suspicious West Indians and like-minded lovers of West Indies cricket around the world, the Indian Premier League represents a final nail in the coffin of the Caribbean game.

From the reduction in the number of overseas players on the English county circuit, via the one-bouncer-per-batsman-per-over rule, to mandatory over-rates – those who see a conspiracy around every corner in these former outposts of the British Empire have, they claim, the evidence to justify their paranoia, and to adhere to the belief that the dominance enjoyed by their heroes until the mid-1990s was just too much for the stiff-upper-lip lawmakers to take.

Even now, with West Indies’ status as cricket’s biggest drawcards an increasingly distant memory, those who were once obliterated by the Caribbean hurricane will stop at nothing – or so the theory goes – to see West Indies reduced to an irrelevance.

OK, so maybe we exaggerate. But by how much? Because along comes the IPL, scheduled from its inception – and with the blessing of the ICC – in the very midst of West Indies’ international season.

It was bad enough when the ICC, as part of its initial dabbling with the Future Tours Programme, insisted in 2001 that the West Indies Cricket Board should host a second team every year, therefore extending its obligations – and expenses – into the early months of the rainy season.

Wes Hall, a fearsome fast bowler in his fire-breathing heyday, was reduced as WICB president to a whimpering apologist when his explanation of the dilemma facing his organisation came to nought at

an ICC meeting in London in 2002, mere days after inclement weather had predictably begun to saturate the extended schedule. And so it has been since, with successive bosses of the WICB in effect conceding they have neither influence nor support for their case.

With rain an ever-present threat to the latter part of the season – and now the IPL casting a shadow over the heart of a long-established tradition of cricket in the drier months – even diehard West Indian fans are left wondering about the point of having a season any more.

The threat the IPL poses to the West Indies cricket season is two-fold: timing and money. For every other major cricket-playing country – almost all of them located well north or south of the equator – the scheduling of the IPL is either in spring or autumn. Even when there is overlap with those nations’ home seasons, most administrations are either willing to accommodate their stars’ desires or have the economic strength and financial resources to ensure premier players are well compensated. That way, seven weeks on the subcontinent seems less of an attractive proposition.

Then there is the fact that the WICB, representing a collection of tiny, mainly heavily indebted, sovereign states with a combined population of little more than seven million, lack the financial clout to get anywhere close to matching what players are offered by IPL franchises.

That’s why, with Australia in the Caribbean recently and ripe for the picking, West Indies were without the services of Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bravo, Marlon

West Indians have always been susceptible to lucrative offers elsewhere, says Fazeer Mohammed. But the IPL has proved especially divisive

How pride came before a fall

Samuels, exciting all-rounder Andre Russell and mystery spinner Sunil Narine for the three Tests – not forgetting Kieron Pollard, of course, although he is still viewed as primarily a limited-over player.

Of that six, only Samuels was named in the Test squad for this series in England. The others are expected to be available for the limited-over matches, since they come at the end of the IPL. Still, it is an uncomfortable compromise.

While Gayle’s situation is compounded by a protracted dispute stemming from critical comments he made about the WICB and head coach Ottis Gibson last year in a radio interview, the fundamental issue remains the same: young men from the Caribbean see the comparative riches of the IPL, and by extension other domestic Twenty20 tournaments, as too good to pass up.

In societies defined by an inequitable distribution of state wealth, where corruption is a major challenge and the attainment of political power perceived to be the key to self-enrichment, it may be unrealistic to expect someone like Narine – uncapped at the highest level, and whose $US700,000 contract with Kolkata Knight Riders translates into $4.3m in his native Trinidad and Tobago – to forego the opportunity because of the intangible pride and prestige of Test cricket.

And yet cricketers from this part of the world have always been vulnerable to lucrative alternatives. When Kerry Packer set up World Series Cricket in 1977, his agents had little problem in recruiting an entire West Indies squad comprising all the top players except one – Alvin Kallicharran. Kalli subsequently took part in another money-driven exodus, signing for what was then Transvaal in apartheid South Africa in 1981-82, before joining a full West Indies rebel squad that played for the next two seasons in the racially segregated republic.

Those were the days when West Indies ruled the world, when Caribbean pride on the cricket field was thought to be at its highest… and still players were drawn to the promise of greater financial security, whatever the long-term consequences.

Instead of digging their heels in and sniping from a convenient distance, the players and administrators must engage in mature dialogue amid an atmosphere of trust. But, in almost a decade of deepening antagonism between the WICB and the West Indies Players’ Association, this has been sadly lacking.

Even if all the conspiracy theorists regarding the IPL et al. are proven wrong, it is the failure of these two essential elements of West Indies cricket – cricketers and administrators – to work together for the good of the regional game that will leave the third key ingredient – the long-suffering fans – despairing for the fate of what was once the source of so much pride and joy.

Fazeer Mohammed is a cricket broadcaster and journalist based in Trinidad and Tobago

Wisden EXTRA • England v West Indies 13

He’ll always be known as one half of a truly great opening partnership, but Desmond Haynes – a lovely, friendly, warm-hearted man – was much more than simply the chap at the other end from Gordon Greenidge. This was taken on his Test debut, against Australia at Port-of-Spain, at a moment when many cricketers would be uneasy about what’s really quite an intimate shot. Still, I did let him get away with some unsubtle product placement!

Eagar’s Eye

6

Wisden EXTRA • England v West Indies14

From the Archive Wisden 1991

England’s victory was their first against West Indies in 16 years and 30 Tests. Before this match began, it would have been hard to find one person in the Caribbean willing to give England a chance of victory. When it ended, just before lunch on the final day, the game’s established order had been so dramatically overturned that even those within the England party were scarcely able to absorb the fact. Among those who witnessed it were two members of the only previous England team to win in Kingston, 36 years earlier, Sir Leonard Hutton and T. G. Evans.

West Indies were without Logie and Ambrose, both unfit, but their team nonetheless had a familiar appearance. England gave first caps to Stewart and Hussain and opted, controversially, to include only four bowlers, not one of them a spinner. It was a policy vindicated by subsequent events, and none of the chosen quartet can ever have bowled better.

There was no hint of the sensations to come as West Indies’ opening pair were putting on 62. However, Greenidge’s run-out, as he tried to take a second when Malcolm fumbled at fine leg, was the first of several needlessly sacrificed wickets as all ten went down for the addition of only 102 runs. Not that West Indies’ lowest total against England for 21 years, since the Leeds Test of 1969, was entirely due to slapdash batting. Operating rigidly to an off-stump line, England’s four bowlers could not be faulted and, after Small, Malcolm and Capel had taken important top-order wickets, Fraser collected the last five at a personal cost of six runs. To complete one of their best days’ cricket in some years, England navigated to close of play for the loss only of Gooch and Stewart, the latter to a viciously rising ball from Bishop which was a sobering reminder of possible reprisals.

The first two sessions of the second day were decisive, with England losing only one wicket as Larkins, Lamb and Smith applied themselves to five-day disciplines

with a will not always evident in recent England displays. Lamb and Smith put on 172 for the fourth wicket, and Lamb went on to his tenth Test century, five of them against West Indies. He had been batting for 364 minutes when he was out, and by the close of play England were 178 on with two wickets remaining.

That lead was stretched to 200 early on the third day, which ended with the game all but decided. Despite approaching their second innings more professionally than their first, the West Indians still found some curious ways of getting out on a pitch on which the increasingly low bounce called for the elimination of certain shots. Malcolm bowled fast, and with unsuspected control, taking the crucial wicket when he dismissed Richards (for the second time in the match) to end a partnership of 80 with Best. That wicket fell with West Indies still eight runs short of avoiding an innings defeat and, when three more fell in consecutive overs while they clawed a lead of 29 before the close, it seemed that only the weather could deny England.

This being Jamaica, such a thing could not happen – yet it so nearly did. It rained intermittently on the rest day and again, heavily, overnight. The fourth day’s play was abandoned, after numerous inspections, but English prayers were answered when the final day dawned sunny and clear. The two outstanding West Indian wickets were taken in 20 balls, their confusion ending, as it had begun, in a run-out. England, needing 41 to win, coasted home for the loss of Gooch, who had waited ten years to beat West Indies and now, as captain, deserved to have been there at the end. This, however, was a match of no logic and, while it paid handsome tribute to the preparation and discipline of the England team, it asked more questions than it answered about West Indies.

Man of the Match: A. J. Lamb.

England arrived in the Caribbean after losing the Ashes 4–0. The selectors’ answer wasto sack David Gower and Ian Botham, and install Graham Gooch as captain. Few thoughthis team would put up much of a fight but, as Alan Lee describes, the First Test made amockery of form

Fighting fire with fireScorecard: click here

At Kingston, Jamaica, February 24, 25, 26, 28, March 1. England won by nine wickets. Toss: West Indies. Test debuts: N. Hussain, A. J. Stewart.

Who top-scored with 18 when England were shot out for 46 in Trinidad in 1993-94, and then made two centuries in the next match as England became the first visiting side to win a Test in Barbados for more than 59 years?

Who took four wickets in one over during the Fourth Test of the 2000 England–West Indies series?

Which England player was on the field throughout Brian Lara’s 375 in Antigua in 1993-94, and his 400 not out on the same ground in 2003-04?

Who made his Test debut against West Indies at Lord’s in 2009, and took five for 38 – his first three wickets all coming in the same over?

England v West Indies

QUIZ1

23

45

6

7

8

9

10

West Indies played their first official Test matches in England in 1928. Which future great was omitted from their touring team, as he was thought to be too young?

By Steven Lynch

Answers on page 20

You didn’t mess with Viv. He simply demanded respect, and you gave it to him. I used to wonder whether, deep down, he had a soft spot – perhaps there’s a glimpse of it here? But even if Viv was outwardly jovial, you still had to be careful, working out what his real mood was and deciding whether you could risk getting the camera out. If you did, it was often sensible to fit a long lens and retreat to a safe distance. Whatever mood he was in, though, he always had presence. Oh, and he could bat, too.

Eagar’s Eye

7

Wisden EXTRA • England v West Indies 15

Who scored the first triple-century in Test cricket, during a match between West Indies and England in 1929-30?

Who were “Those two little pals of mine”?

Who came out to bat with a broken arm at Lord’s in 1963, to prevent a West Indian victory?

Which two great West Indian batsmen scored 157 and 150 not out – the final Test century for both of them – at Lord’s in 1973?

England tried four captains in the course of losing the 1988 home series 4–0. Who was the only man to skipper in two of the Tests?

Wisden EXTRA • England v West Indies16

Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for inviting me, but it’s highly disconcerting to be celebrating the publication of a book I neither wrote nor receive the slightest mention in. Since many writers wish they were cricketers, and most cricketers end up being writers, I take this to be an essentially literary gathering. So I expect you to know what I mean when I say that the first thing a writer does when he sees a book he hasn’t written is to curse it under his breath; the second thing – if he happens to be in a bookshop – is to hide it behind a stack of his own; and the third thing he does, when he’s sure no one’s looking, is to flick through to see if he’s mentioned anywhere.

And it shouldn’t be that hard to get a mention in Wisden... leading bowlers in an English season, leading batsmen in schools cricket, most catches in a county match, fewest catches in a county match, most hat-tricks, seven wickets or more in an innings, most serious breaches of the ICC code of conduct, double-hundreds on debut, Wisden’s ten Moments in Time, Women’s Test and one-day international records – yes, I went so far as to see if there was any reference to me there, if only as someone that the leading woman wicket-taker in a rained-off Twenty20 against Bangladesh had once refused to go out with. When you’re desperate to find yourself, you look anywhere – you even check the obituaries. (I’ll be checking again when tonight’s over.)

But no mention of me, anyway. Not a Jacobson to be found, the nearest being Arno Jacobs who plays for the Warriors and who therefore, as a South African, you’d expect to be opening the batting for England.

There is, of course, no reason why I should appear

in Wisden until they include the category of most hours of cricket listened to on radio or watched on television by somebody who otherwise hasn’t got a life. In times of loneliness, failure and depression – that’s to say, most days – spectating cricket, either in the flesh or through the electronic media, is what I have always done.

For so long and in such fraught circumstances have I listened – during the English tour of Australia in 1974-75, for example, I stayed up all night with the radio on under my pillow, even on rest days – that for a while I came to believe I could determine the course of the game. I take for granted your knowledge of Dr Johnson’s great short novel Rasselas in which, you will remember, among all the other characters whose sanity is in question, there’s an astronomer who believes he can control the weather.

“One day as I was looking on the fields withering with heat, I felt in my mind a sudden wish that I could send rain on the southern mountains, and raise the Nile to an inundation. In the hurry of my imagination I commanded rain to fall, and, by comparing the time of my command, with that of the inundation, I found that the clouds had listened to my lips.”

The possibility of coincidence is pointed out to him, but he refuses to countenance it. The weather, he believes, does what it does because he tells it to. In the same spirit I believed that the outcome of a cricket match, indeed a whole series, was in my power.

I discovered, for example, that if I turned over twice during a Dennis Lillee over he would not take a wicket.

Bay 13 – unlucky for some

On April 11, 2012 the novelist Howard Jacobson gave the speech at the annual Wisden dinner...

Wisden EXTRA • England v West Indies 17

It was thanks to me constantly tossing in my bed that Mike Denness and Keith Fletcher put on nearly 200 in Melbourne. In the end it was Max Walker who broke the partnership, and that only happened because I had to go to the toilet. Similarly, though the match was ultimately drawn, it was only because I sang “My Way” into the radio every time Bob Willis charged into bowl that he took five for 61 in the Third Test. That Ian Chappell was out lbw to Willis for a duck in Australia’s second-innings run-chase I ascribe to my having realised that both Chappells were more than usually likely to have lbw decisions go against them when I went to bed without pyjamas… Yes, that was a cold and oddly troubled night, but we got the draw.

How it is, given these powers, that I haven’t secured us more wins against Australia I am unable to explain. It might have something to do with the fact that I’ve spent a lot of time in Australia and so have unconscious divided loyalties. They must be deeply unconscious, in that case, because though I love Australians for most things I do not love them for their cricket, where it seems to me that their trying so hard (in those baggy green caps) and caring so much about winning is against the spirit of the game. I did once test out on some Australian friends my theory that this trying too hard had a historical explanation, in that while English cricket grew out of friendly hostilities between gentlemen and players, Australia never had any gentlemen. But their response simply proved my point.

If you have ever watched cricket in Australia from Bay 13 of the MCG you will know what I mean about lack of gentlemanly demeanour. If you look up Bay 13 on the internet you will find reference to rowdiness, throwing beach balls and the gentle, good-humoured

teasing of opposing teams. Ladies and gentlemen, I have seen many things thrown from Bay 13, but never a beach ball. If you imagine the most hardened inmates of Alcatraz, San Quentin, Rikers Island, and a couple of inner London comprehensives, let out for a day to watch cricket in the boiling heat, and with access to all the alcohol their hearts desire – except that they have no hearts – you still will not have an adequate picture of the animality which is Bay 13.

The first match I saw there was a Boxing Day Test between Australia and West Indies in 1981 – the one in which Dennis Lillee broke the record for the highest number of Test wickets. I don’t need to tell this gathering that what lends the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne its peculiar atmosphere is the fact of the majority of the 90,000 spectators still being drunk, stuffed and sunburnt from the day before. They bring to the ground their hampers of left-over turkey, plum pudding, lukewarm Chardonnay and chilled beer, and carry on as though it’s still Christmas on the beach.

They are reluctant to move from their seats, partly because of the effect of drink, partly because they haven’t slept, partly because Lillee’s bowling, and partly because someone else will steal their places if they do. There are of course toilets at the MCG but they can seem a long way from Bay 13. What is more natural then, given the numbers of empty cans at their feet, than that they should fill them with what was, after all, only beer in the first place?

This is where descriptions of spectators in Bay 13 throwing beach balls fail to do justice not only to the feral beauty of the day, but to what they actually do

Wow! You wouldn’t want to field in the covers when Gordon Greenidge was in full flow. This was Lord’s 1984 – and one of the most dominating Test innings I’ve ever seen. David Gower declared on the final morning, setting West Indies a target of 342, and Greenidge hit an unbeaten 214. He was totally unstoppable – a real statement. I’ve always been a Hampshire supporter, and for many years I watched Greenidge in partnership with Barry Richards. There aren’t many countries who can boast a pair of openers of that quality – let alone counties.

Eagar’s Eye 8

continued overleaf

throw. I don’t want to get into who started this on the day I was there – whether it was the spectators in the tier above throwing overflowing cans of urine down on Bay 13 (an insult to which Bay 13 had of course to respond in kind), or whether heat, high spirits, excitement and Dennis Lillee’s impending achievement caused the drunken denizens of Bay 13 to see how high in the air they could toss their cans, regardless of incitement – but the consequence could only be likened to a nuclear explosion in a public urinal, golden droplets glistening in the sun like a summer shower, any distaste for which vanished in that spirit of camaraderie that Australians call mateship.

It was while the yellow rain of Australian masculinity was still falling that Lillee took the record-breaking wicket. I think his victim was Larry Gomes, but in the exhilaration it was hard to tell. That Lillee was mobbed by his team-mates goes without saying. Ditto that the crowd went even wilder – if you can believe that – than it had already been. But what happened when “Waltzing Matilda” was piped out around the ground – followed by “Shaddap You Face” – no one could have foreseen: Lillee himself standing sobbing like a baby, accepting from his fellows what the editor of Wisden 2012 discreetly describes as “shy bum-slaps”, and then all 90,000 urine-soaked spectators doing likewise, every bloke clinging on to every other bloke, heaving, shaking, an orgy of fluidal sentimentality that exceeded the orgy of fluidal animality that had preceded it. “Ah, mate,” a person to whom I had never been introduced blubbed into my neck. “Ah, mate,” I had no option but to sob back – shyly slapping his bum.

He invited me home. He showed me photographs of his wife and told me she was mine if I wanted her. In an act of still more extravagant generosity he gave me his Four’N Twenty Pie. And finally (for mateship can

stretch no further than this), he offered to share a can with me – an offer I was quick to decline.

Now why doesn’t this make it into Wisden? Cricket isn’t only about runs and wickets. Why aren’t I in there, having had more you-know-what thrown at me while being kissed by more weeping Australians in a single Boxing Day Test than any other Englishman who has survived to tell the tale?

But I have a final story to relate which I think cements my claim – at least to one of Wisden’s ten Moments in Time, 1864–2013. I know you are familiar with Harold Pinter’s poem – “I saw Len Hutton in his prime/Another time, another time” – which he proudly faxed to his friend Simon Gray, who was uncertain how to respond, and then, when Pinter rang up three days later demanding to know what he thought, said: “Erm, I haven’t had time to finish it yet.” Well, there’s a touching coda to that.

Pinter and Gray fell out over what Pinter considered to be an unflattering portrait of him in Simon Gray’s The Smoking Diaries. Knowing nothing of this, I happened to tell Pinter that what Simon Gray had written about him was the most affectionate tribute from one male writer to another I had ever read. “Do you think that?” Pinter said. “Do you really think that?” “I do,” I said. “It’s a love song to you.”

Later, I discovered that I had, in this way and entirely accidentally, brokered peace between them. At a rapprochement dinner soon afterwards Pinter gave Gray a miniature reproduction of a portrait of Hutton he owned, on which he wrote: “Another time, another time.” Neither, alas, lived to see many more times, but I’m told that that portrait of Len Hutton still stands on Simon Gray’s desk.

Literature and cricket, cricket and literature – it’s an indissoluble bond. And I am most flattered to have been allowed, briefly, into its embrace.

Wisden EXTRA • England v West Indies18

Bay 13 of the MCG in December 1974. Pic: Patrick Eagar

CHRIS GAYLE COMPLETES THE SET Chris Gayle achieved his lifetime ambition of having played for every single cricket team in the world when he opened the batting for Great Missenden Girls’ School Under Nines today.

Gayle scored 196* but left before the close of the Great Missenden innings because he had to deposit his cheque at the bank.

SPACE: THE FINAL FRONTIER, THE NEXT OPPORTUNITY After being introduced by fellow Jamaican Usain Bolt, Chris Gayle has lobbied Richard Branson to make him the first passenger on any future Virgin space flight.

“I heard there are teams on other planets paying big for power hitters,” said Gayle. “I want to be the first interplanetary cricketer-for-hire.”

“To mercenar-infinity and beyond,” added the swashbuckling freelance opener.

CHRIS GAYLE “DELIGHTED” WITH ENGLAND MOVE Peripatetic batting ace Chris Gayle this afternoon expressed his joy at being named in the England team to face West Indies at Lord’s.

“This is a great opportunity for me to play in an exciting franchise and I’m really happy with my new central contract from the ECB,” he said.

However, Gayle did confirm that he had to pretend to be from South Africa for the duration of his stay in the England team.

CHRIS GAYLE PAVILION CONFUSION Arriving at Lord’s this morning, Chris Gayle was pointed in the direction of the West Indies dressing-room.

A bemused Gayle said he wasn’t too sure if he fancied playing for that team as he didn’t really recognise any of the people in the dressing-room, and enquired about the possibility of signing for the England XI.

Wisden EXTRA • England v West Indies 19

In April, the BBC shut down Ceefax; the onscreen TV information service that kept a generation or two ofcricket fans abreast of scores from around the country and the world in blocky, suspenseful detail. Amongthe most beloved Ceefax screens in the land were the bank of tellies in the Lord’s pavilion, each tuned toa county game’s scorecard and ferrying feats of textual derring-do back to a small crowd of county cricketbadgers over-by-painfully-slow-to-update-over. But we must all move with the times – even the Lord’s pavilion(well, a bit) – and the home of cricket is proud to announce a new multimedia installation in the screens’place, and just in time for the West Indies series too. Alan Tyers takes a sneak peak at…

Retronautingby Beach

Wisden EXTRA • England v West Indies20

QUIZ Answers See page 15

1 George Headley. He would have been 19 early in that 1928 tour: instead he had to wait until the 1929-30 home series, when he started with 176 in his first match, made 114 and 112 in the third, and 223 in the fourth.

2 Andy Sandham, the Surrey opener: he made 325 (and 50) in the final match of that 1929-30 series at Kingston. He was almost 40, and it was his final Test appearance.

3 Sonny Ramadhin and Alf Valentine, the unheralded spinners who turned out to be the star bowling performers of West Indies’ tour of England in 1950, when they won a series in England for the first time.

4 Colin Cowdrey. He came out in the final over, prepared to bat one-handed if necessary, but was not required to face.

5 Rohan Kanhai (157) and Garry Sobers.6 John Emburey (Second and Third Tests). The

others were Mike Gatting (First Test), Chris Cowdrey (Fourth) and Graham Gooch (Fifth).

7 Alec Stewart.8 Andy Caddick, at Headingley. West Indies were

shot out for 61, and lost inside two days.9 Graham Thorpe (the only other men to feature

in both matches were Shivnarine Chanderpaul and umpire Darrell Hair).

10 Graham Onions (Durham).

Wisden EXTRA 2 – competition winnersSanthana Krishnan of Bangalore predicted a 3-0 series victory for Australia; almost all other entrants believed it would be a close series, but the runners-up are Clive Agent of Essex and Niall Mills of County Limerick. All three win copies of Wisden on India.

We’re back with Hampshire again, and with the original West Indies fast bowler, Andy Roberts – God, he was quick! This was in the old Benson & Hedges Cup in 1974, his first full season in county cricket, and I’d travelled down to Taunton specifically to get one of him charging in. He didn’t let me down, though it was the courage of another young player that won the match for Somerset. An18-year-old Ian Botham came in at 113 for seven and was promptly hit in the mouth by Roberts. He carried on – and steered Somerset to victory at 184 for nine.

10Eagar’s Eye

Back in the early 1970s, we didn’t really have the photographic equipment to take an action shot in close-up. The best we could do was wait until the sun shone and set the shutter speed to 1/500th. That’s what I did with this pic of Garry Sobers – and you can see the bat’s a bit of a blur. (We’re spoiled nowadays, and we’d always be able to take this at 1/1000th, or even quicker.) Sobers was head and shoulders the best all-rounder I ever saw – and the best batsman too. He was just a cricketing god. This is at Lord’s in 1973, his last Test in England, when he hit an unbeaten 150. He briefly retired unwell at 132, and the story goes that he was keener to see a horse-race on the television than seek treatment for an upset stomach.

Eagar’s Eye 9

Wisden EXTRA • England v West Indies 21

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