Defining an Era

Vivian Richards was, is, a proud and unusually gifted man, defiant and mentally impregnable. Like the team with which he dominated the world between the late 1970s and the early 1990s, he was the best of the best of the best.

And the late Runako Morton, another Leeward Islander, with all his wasteful indiscipline and squandered talent, could equally be seen to represent all that has gone wrong with the Caribbean game.

I never bowled to Richards (thank God) and I've never met him, so it's impossible for me to match the sublimely recalled memories of Mike Selvey and The Old Batsman, but, throughout my cricketing childhood and adolescence and young manhood, he was always there.

When he made 291 at an implausibly brown and parched Oval in August 1976, I was ten years old. When, on the same ground, greener this time, he chipped a catch to Hugh Morris to bring his Test career to a close in 1991, I was twenty-five. I wasn't present on either occasion but I can remember exactly where I was and how I felt.

In between those times I was there for some of his greatest innings. The 138 not out in the 1979 World Cup final, concluded by flicking Mike Hendrick into the old Mound Stand with all the ease of a man on an Antiguan beach lifting a small child's best ball into the sea, or the unbeaten century against Surrey in the Benson and Hedges Final in 1981 when Sylvester Clarke became the first bowler we'd ever seen to truly, even slightly, hurry him. Later there was the decimation of England at Old Trafford and the time he took Warwickshire for 322 in the day at Taunton.

Even though I could always see how extraordinary Richards was, I was always just a little ambivalent about him. My elder brother idolised him but I had a preference for players who were just a little smoother and more technically measured. Greg Chappell, Old Trafford, 1977, Gavaskar, The Oval, 1979. They were my batsmen, but Richards was always there.

For people who were around then, Richards defines a world cricket era. You hardly need to think about the shots or the runs, just the rhythmic swagger of his walk to the wicket, and, as Selvey says, the signature, unnecessary tapping of the pitch which was usually the prelude to carnage.

Of course Runako Morton was no Richards, but, to have your five minutes of fame as part of the dying West Indies team of the 2000s, you didn't need to be. In 2007 he came to England and showed something of what he could do. He could have done more, but, like many a West Indies player of his era he came and went like a thief in the night, with few people noticing he had gone, their only memories his frequent brushes with authority.

This week Morton lost his life at the age of thirty-three and Richards celebrated his sixtieth birthday. Test players die young from time to time - since the turn of this century Trevor Madondo, Ben Hollioake, Manjural Islam and Morton - and old cricketers reach sixty all the time.

This conjunction, though, has deeper resonances with the past.

Richards will never really be old, and the West Indies will never really be great again.

A Kind of Redemption

There were a lot of complaints doing the rounds in the media a few weeks ago about the poor quality of the Test series between England and the West Indies. The West Indians just weren't good enough they said. England had nothing to beat. Ergo it was 'poor' Test cricket.

I agreed that the West Indies were poor - who couldn't? - but I tended to demur from the prevailing opinion that the Test series was worthless just because of that, together with the poor quality of much of England's bowling. If nothing else, the West Indies, and the series, had Chanderpaul, but it was hard, at the time, to see where their next win was coming from.

The Twenty20 and ODI series have been something entirely different, though, culminating in today's game at Trent Bridge, which saw a united and vibrant West Indian side lay waste to England. Their display had everything - positive captaincy from Gayle, high pace and aggression from Edwards and Powell, powerful runs from Morton, brilliant catches greeted with celebrations direct from the carnivals of the Caribbean.

Whether it was the fact that they had the sun on their backs for the first time since Old Trafford or simply that they were playing England at a game which England can't play is uncertain. Equally, who's to know whether this, like The Oval in September 2004, is another false dawn or the start of better times for a team - and a cricket culture - that sure as hell needs it.

Whatever the case, Trent Bridge, Saturday 7th July 2007, looks, from this short distance, like a kind of redemption.

Going Nowhere

Well, I've seen better Test series, but the one which ended in Durham yesterday did serve a few useful purposes. It confirmed that Shivnarine Chanderpaul is an extraordinary batsman. Maybe not genuinely great, but certainly genuinely extraordinary.

Has there ever been another Test series in which one batsman has been so far ahead of all his peers? I don't know, but I doubt it.

Lara usually had Chanderpaul himself, and Sarwan. After Lord's Chanderpaul had nobody, although Bravo, as always, did his best and Gayle and Morton briefly succeeded in spite of themselves. The rest were nowhere.

The series also showed that there surely can't be any further for the West Indies to fall. Their batting lacks technique, their bowling lacks fitness, finesse, pace and variety, their fielding is an abject shambles. Many of their players - with Gayle the worst offender - look as though they just don't care. This really shows in the field, and, until more of their players can acquire the determination, desire and strength of character of Chanderpaul and Bravo (or even Edwards or Sammy), they're going nowhere.

During the Old Trafford Test it was surprising and concerning to hear Tony Cozier say for the first time that he wondered whether the West Indies would benefit from a sabbatical from Test cricket in which they played other countries' 'A' teams in order to give themselves a chance to regroup, perhaps win some games and restore their lost confidence.

Has it really come to this?