The greatest cricketers of all time - No. 4

Continuing with our series on the greatest cricketers of all time, here’s No. 4 on our list.

No. 4 – Vivian Richards

There are many fine sights in the world of cricket. An elegant cover drive (Michael Vaughan’s was my personal favourite), a spinner tweaking one through the gate (Swann to Ponting springs to my mind) and last but certainly not least, a batsman smashing the ball to every corner of the ground.

In recent years this sight has become more and more common. The introduction of T20 has seen bats get bigger, boundaries get shorter and run rates soar. There are plenty of batsmen who empty bars these days; Gayle, Pietersen, Pollard – the list goes on and on. However, none of these players will ever be deemed the ‘master blaster’. That tag belongs to the greatest entertainer of them all – Sir Vivian Richards.

Sir Don Bradman will forever be known as the greatest batsman ever, but Viv will always be known as the most destructive, entertaining and spectacular. Often, the aura that surrounded him meant that the bowler was already defeated by the time he arrived at the crease. His swagger was one of his greatest strengths; walking to the crease, chewing his gum ferociously, he seemed invincible. He often was.

There are players with better stats; lots of players, in fact. But there has been no one who scored his runs in such an awe-inspiring manner. Those fortunate enough to witness his most destructive innings will never forget them. England were often on the receiving end of his most brutal form; his world record for the fastest Test hundred was described by John Emburey as “the biggest carnage I have seen in such a short space of time in any first-class game”. In that innings, he reached his 50 in 35 balls, and then proceeded to score the next fifty in just 21 balls. It was a remarkable display of hitting. No one was safe; Richards’ great friend Ian Botham was at the forefront of the massacre, having foolishly tried to bounce out the great man. Needless to say, it didn’t work.

But there was more to Richards than just destructive hitting. When Clive Lloyd retired, Richards took up the West Indies captaincy. Under his leadership, the team got even better. He never lost a series as captain, a quite incredible record.

West Indies was not the only side to benefit from Viv’s supreme talent. The Master Blaster, along with fellow West Indian Joel Garner, played for Somerset for 8 years. He became a legend at Taunton, so much so that the entrance gates and a stand at the ground now bear his name. Alongside Garner and Botham, he brought trophies and entertainment to Taunton after a very long time. In 1987, he was controversially booted out of Somerset, with Peter Roebuck allegedly being the chief architect. But that decision came back to bite them as Richards joined Glamorgan in 1990 and was instrumental in them winning the AXA Sunday League in 1993.

Greatness is hard to define. Do you define it by cold, hard stats? Or by flair and talent? Well, you probably have to find some middle ground, and when you reach that middle ground, you will find Viv Richards. No one has ever combined such staggering strokeplay with such sustained success. One might assume that no one will ever do so in the future either.

And now for the obligatory video clip. The arrogance, the strokeplay, the flamboyance – they are all on display in this compilation of some of Richards’s most fearsome big hits. Take a look!

These are the other players who have made it so far:

No. 20 – Bill O’Reilly; No. 19 – Fred Trueman; No. 18 – Dennis Lillee; No. 17 – Sunil Gavaskar; No. 16 – Steve Waugh; No. 15 – Kapil Dev; No. 14 – Malcolm Marshall; No. 13 – Glenn McGrath; No. 12 – Imran Khan; No. 11 – Brian Lara; No. 10 – Jack Hobbs; No. 9 – Adam Gilchrist; No. 8 – Wasim Akram; No. 7 – Ricky Ponting; No. 6 – Muttiah Muralitharan; No. 5 – Shane Warne

Read the detailed write-ups on all the players in this list here:

The greatest cricketers of all time