The coming of Viv
FRANK KEATING
Hosepipe bans? Standpipes in the streets? Ah, yes, I remember them well. Prepare for a host of anniversary paeans from us old sweats of 30 summers ago. ‘Sweat’ being the word, or ‘Phew!’ as the headlines had it all through that heatwave summer of 1976, the most relentlessly parched since records began in 1727. By all accounts, an official drought was announced as early as 15 May and (with the help of Wisden) I see that was the very day I was dispatched to the County Ground, Southampton, to write up a newcomer of promise, an appealing, callow West Indian batsman called Vivian Richards. The summer before, I had seen a couple of his innings — short, sweet and swaggering for Somerset, but in 1975’s inaugural World Cup he had failed to shine for the West Indies. Now on a sublime day in mid-May at Southampton, he played like a belligerent god, scoring a blazing 176 in no time. Wheezing like a grampus in the heat, John Arlott walked photographer Patrick Eager and me for a cheese and onion lunch in the Southampton Police Club canteen and pronounced that he had never seen such vindictively savage batting on his favourite ground.
We followed the tourists to Lord’s. Richards hit a spectacular 113 against MCC. Chairman of England selectors, Alec Bedser, admitted he ‘looked all right, I suppose for a slogger’. Lovely Trent Bridge was already baked to a turn for the opening Test match in the first week of June. Richards made 232, including four sixes and 32 fours. By his final Test innings at the Oval in the mid-August (a crowning 291 — 38 fours), his series aggregate of 829 runs in seven innings had been bettered only by Bradman’s 905 in 1930. Never before had I seen a consummate batsman so brutally selecting his shots on the length of the ball as opposed to its line — so deliveries outside off-stump had fieldsmen at mid-on, or even deep midwicket, fearing for their lives. Even the best of bowlers were quiveringly unsure where to bowl at him. New whizz Kevin Pietersen has the same thrilling ability today.
Meantime, Wimbledon’s 1976 fortnight remains its hottest ever — and not just a steamy midsummer hot but blue-bright batter ing sunshine hot. Between 21 June and 3 July every day logged 32°C or more and our daily stories were not of groping vicars in the crowd, but of serious sunstroke and of All England club bans for spectators who took off their shirts. Aptly, the young Swede we called ‘the Iceman’, Bjorn Borg, won the first of his five successive titles. Then to the Open, where Royal Birkdale’s links were already burnt Sahara-yellow by the sun and so fast were the fairways that six-shot winner Johnny Miller never touched his driver and used only his No 2 iron off every tee. Miller, a Mormon, said the Lancashire coast resembled Salt Lake City.
On 9 August Viv Richards scored 121 v. Glamorgan at Swansea and, at Westminster, the Drought Bill was rushed through Parliament. Sports minister Denis Howell was named Minister of Drought Co-ordination. Within ten days he was ‘Minister for Floods’, for on the morning of Monday 30 August (the bank holiday, wouldn’t you know) the heavens opened as Richards was padding up for his last innings of the summer in the final one-day international at Edgbaston. Torrential rain meant Richards could get to a soggy wicket only 28 hours later. And first ball (c Wood b J.K. Lever) he was out for a duck: obviously.
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