Viv Richards was sent back to bat twice in one innings, and failed both times
At 17, playing for Antigua against St Kitts, Viv Richards was out first ball. Six thousand spectators poured onto the field in protest, so officials let him bat again to calm things down. He made another duck and then served a two-year ban. Decades later he blamed the adults who pushed him back out there.
Richards grew up in St John's, where his brothers played for Antigua and a neighbour who had captained the island helped his father coach him. Leaving school at 18, he worked at a bar whose owner, D'Arcy Williams, bought him his first proper kit. Surrey rejected him and Andy Roberts after net trials in 1972, deciding neither was worth developing. Somerset's vice chairman, Len Creed, thought otherwise after watching him in Antigua and brought him to England in 1973.
His apprenticeship was humble. He played league cricket in Bath while working as the ground staff's assistant, topped the club's batting averages, and earned a county contract. At Taunton he shared a flat with a young Ian Botham, beginning a friendship that would matter later. In 1974 he played his first Test, against India, and hit an unbeaten 192 in only his second.
Then came the peak. He ran out three Australians in the first World Cup final in 1975 and scored a century in the 1979 final at Lord's, both won by the West Indies. In 1976 he piled up 1,710 Test runs at an average of 90, including 291 at the Oval after missing a match with glandular fever, a calendar-year record that stood for three decades. At Old Trafford in 1984 he struck 189 not out from a hopeless 166 for 9, dragging his side to victory. He also turned down blank-cheque offers to tour apartheid South Africa with a rebel team.
As captain from 1984 to 1991 he never lost a Test series, winning 27 of 50 matches, though Wisden called one aggressive appeal against England undignified. Somerset's decision in 1988 not to renew his contract, or that of Joel Garner, so angered Botham that he left the county in protest; Taunton later named entrance gates after Richards. He retired with 8,540 Test runs at 50.23 and was knighted in 1999.
Source: Viv Richards
