The King Holds Court

GH on a vivid image from a vivid book

My old confrere Mark Ray today publishes a sumptuous survey of his incomparable work as a photographer, Cricket: A Portrait of a Game, complete with an introduction by Mike Atherton and some liner notes by, well, me. Here’s a sample image: a photo of the mighty Viv holding court at the Gabba before the First Test of 1988-89 that I’ve adorned with a few words. You know what happened next.

Of fourteen Australian seasons between 1975-6 to 1988-89, Viv Richards featured in ten.  In addition to his appearances for West Indies, he played for Queensland and under Kerry Packer’s big top.  If any visiting player was entitled to don a windcheater bearing the Australian Made logo, it was the Master Blaster, because his feats here were a defining part of his legend.  And goodness knows, he could have worn a ragtop jumper in the 1980s and inspired legions of imitators.

But what I like here is not that kind of look; rather is it the look that the great man is giving the vista outside the frame.  It was the day before the Brisbane Test of 1988.  As captain of the West Indies, the great man had gathered the Australian press corps to answer a few questions in his baritone drawl.  In those days, the dressing rooms at the Gabba were a kind of self-contained cottage with a ground floor verandah.  The media box above was connected by an open staircase at the side.  It was all very rambling and tropical - the interactions between players and press were accordingly informal and easy.

As Mark Ray recalls it, Viv offered a few non-committal quotes, then cast an eye to the middle for a few seconds.  Perhaps he was reflecting on his Australian debut at the same ground where he was caught for a duck and the West Indies were crushed; perhaps he was weighing up whether to bowl first the next day in the ground’s sultry conditions which he knew would favour his now-lethal bowling attack.  Either way, he fills the frame here with a proprietorial air.  It cannot contain him.  His physique is magnificent.  His nonchalance is total.  His reverie is inscrutable.  He has his foot on the railing as he anticipates it on Australia’s throat, and rightly so: in the match about to unfold, West Indies will demolish Australia in three and a half days by nine wickets.  

But what else did we then expect?  West Indies were cricket’s kings.  We were so resigned to defeat that Australia declined to tour the Caribbean for more than a decade, but were obliged to host them because they were popular, and none more so than Richards.  There has been no visibly prouder cricketer.  Though it chagrined us that his team held the cosh so long, one also recalled John Ford’s line about John Wayne: ‘The sonofabitch walked like a man.’

Still, every regime passes, and even Richards’s felt the march of time.  This match will be the last Test won by a visiting team at the Gabba for thirty years.  By the time a West Indian team wins again, cricket will have been irrevocably altered; the ground too.  Unaltered will be Richards’ reputation, which has withstood the competition of other great names, in Australia not least of all.

Mark’s book is published by Hardie Grant, costs $70 but is worth every penny.