Rewind: 15 Minutes of Theatre
In 1974, two of cricket's legends faced off in a once-off contest that lasted 15 minutes. It was epic.
"What we gonna do right here is go back
Way back. Back into time..."
Welcome to the second article of the Rewind Series. If you missed it, the first one was Number Four in the Order.
Barry Richards genially batted the balls back to the bowlers. He was relaxed. Gentle cover drives, a little shimmy followed by a soft straight drive back to the bowler, and double-backhanded shots back to the bowler. It was a routine net session. No one was risking injury by going out of their way to do more than the bare minimum.
During one net session of this nature, Richards turned his bat around, he had decided he was going to practice using the edge. Richards middled - or edged, if you prefer - every delivery. Not a single bowler could dismiss him.
His sessions as a kid were more serious than this. Richards was a latchkey kid. His mother and father worked and when he came home from school, he always found the keys under the mat. He had to fend for himself and amuse himself until his parents arrived late in the day. Richards spent that time playing cricket with kids in their street.
If there was no one to play cricket with, Richards would practice alone by throwing a golf ball against a garage wall and hitting the rebound with a 12-inch bat. If he missed it, he would have to make a long walk down the street to retrieve the ball. Richards disliked the walk. In time he learned not to miss. He didn’t miss, he was also able to direct the ball to the exact spot he wanted. It was a challenge he enjoyed.
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Richards’ Hampshire teammates were in the same frame of mind. This could have been an off day, but they were here. Andy Roberts was amusing himself by lobbing some filthy offspin. It wasn’t Hugh Tayfield or Muttiah Muralitharan quality, but the batters treated each delivery with respect.
Roberts was a recent addition to the Hampshire roaster. County cricket and the rest of the world were about to witness a new phenomenon. The first of West Indies' fast bowlers was about to be unleashed on the world, and the world was not ready. In his first season for Hampshire, Roberts was the first bowler to reach 100 wickets in County Cricket. He ended the season with 119 wickets at an average of 13.62. He also took 21 wickets at 10.76 in the John Player League. In 1975 he was Wisden’s Player of the Year.
Watching Roberts bowl, it was hard to believe that this 22-year-old had played his first cricket game at 16. His action was clean. In true Andy Roberts style, he was blazing a trail.
Roberts had spent the 1973 season with Hampshire’s Second XI team. The question had been between Roberts and David O’Sullivan, the New Zealand slow left-arm bowler, for the county’s second overseas spot. O’Sullivan’s contributions were partly responsible for Hampshire’s success in 1973. He was a sure thing. But pace is pace and genuine fast bowlers are a precious commodity and the Hampshire think tank voted to promote Roberts.
Roberts was one of 14 kids in his family. It is easy to get lost in the crowd in such a family. It takes doing something special to get noticed. Maybe that was why he decided to take on Barry Richards that morning. Richards was the best batter in the team, and if Roberts pinned him down with his pace, people would sit up and take notice.
Roberts’ parents were not the most supportive towards their son’s cricket-playing ambitions. He had to prove himself to them as well as the selectors. Maybe Roberts felt that as the new kid on the block, he had to prove himself. Maybe Roberts wanted to test himself against the team’s best batter. Maybe something just set him off. There are many maybes and no answers. But, whatever the reason, Roberts decided to have a go at Richards.
He found a large enough interval between the bowlers servicing Richards to insert himself into proceedings. Roberts was not dealing in gentle offspin anymore. He took off from a spot as far back as his normal run-up in a match. He was about to launch rockets. Richards watched the delivery go past him and careen into the netting behind him.
Sometimes Richards grew bored by the game unless the challenge before him was substantial. Richards enjoyed a good challenge. In 1970, Richards was a relatively unknown quantity in Australia’s Sheffield Shield. There was a lot of hype around him, but few players had seen what he was capable of.
In one of his early matches for South Australia, Richards missed a Graeme McKenzie delivery. It was the first ball he faced. Rod Marsh, who was keeping wicket for Western Australia, turned to John Inverarity at first slip and quipped, “You told me this bloke could play.”
Richards heard the quip and took it as a challenge and went ballistic. When Denis Lillee bowled the last ball of the day, Richards walked down the wicket, drove the ball back past him to the sight screen for four, and without breaking stride continued towards the pavilion. Richards was 325 not out. Inverarity turned to Marsh and commented cryptically: "I suppose he can play a bit."
South Australia had another way to motivate Richards, they paid him a dollar for every run he scored. He earned AUD356 in that innings. 198 of them came off boundaries. That season, Richards averaged 109.86 in that Sheffield Shield season and became only the second player after Bradman to score a century against all opponents.
As he ran in, charging, Andy Roberts transformed Richards’ net session. It was no longer a dreary chore that he had to perform. It was a challenge and Richards was up for it.
The contest between the two resembled the 1981 bout between Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns. It was a study in adaptation. When Harry Altham authored the MCC Manual, he could have done so while watching Richards bat. That was because Richards’ childhood coach, Alan Butler, was a disciple of the Altham teachings. At 11, Richards’ spindly arms were not strong enough to send the ball to the boundary but he was so technically proficient that in his matches for the Under-14 side, the older boys found it near-impossible to dislodge him.
Roberts on the other hand, was quick. He kicked the door down to cement a place in the West Indies team with his pace. Pure and unadulterated pace. The West Indies toured England in 1974. During the tour, the West Indies played two matches against Hampshire. And though Roberts took a solitary wicket across the two matches, he put on a display of pace bowling that made everyone sit up and notice.
Roberts slanted the ball, rather than swinging it. He could also hit the seam and move it back into the batsman. Roberts also varied his pace well and could do it without telegraphing the changes in pace to the batter.
The Roberts versus Richards bout was Virat Kohli vs Wasim Akram, Joel Garner vs Steve Smith, Shaheen Afridi vs Sunil Gavaskar, Javed Miandad vs Ravichandran Ashwin, Jofra Archer vs Ricky Ponting, Glenn McGrath vs Babar Azam. It was a match-up between two of the best from their eras that the world was never meant to witness.
Richards shelved extravagant shots and experimentation and played each delivery on merit. “Occasionally, Richards pushed one into the covers off the back foot or steer it down to gully. When Roberts strayed off his line by a fraction, Richards would lean on it and ease it to mid-on. There were a few front-foot drives. Roberts didn’t pitch it up very often, but there was the occasional square cut, not a savage one but played with exquisite timing,” Andrew Murtagh wrote in Sundial in the Shade.
Roberts was a wonderful exponent of the short delivery. When the West Indies played Hampshire, he floored Steve Camacho, the West Indies opener, after hitting him on the head with a bouncer. He used the short ball to fight fire with fire when he bowled to Roy Fredericks, who played aggressively in both innings. In 1977, Roberts broke David Hookes’ jaw with a bouncer in one of Kerry Packer’s Supertests.
He was the proponent of the famed double-bouncer policy. It was known in cricketing circles that Roberts' first bouncer was a sucker ball that was meant to be hooked. His follow-up bouncer was delivered at lightning speed and often turned into a jaw-seeking missile. Richards was aware of the threat posed by Roberts’ short ball. When Roberts bowled a short one, Richards either swayed out of its line if it was too short or went up on his toes and played it down if it was aimed at his chest.
It was a piece of beautiful theatre. And just as abruptly as it had started, after 15 minutes the duel between Roberts and Richards came to an end. It was 15 minutes of engrossing entertainment that was only witnessed by Roberts and Richards’ teammates and a few bystanders. The contest ended in a draw. Roberts had not dismissed Richards and Richards had not dominated Roberts.
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Thanks for reading. Until next time… - CS
