Roger Alton
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On the first morning Cowdrey walked out for the toss. He was dressed immaculately: England blazer and flawless whites. The only thing missing was a cravat. He made it to the middle in almost total silence… and waited. After about 20 minutes, he remembers, he heard a hum of anticipation round the ground which quickly turned into cheering. It was Viv Richards, the opposing captain, coming down the pavilion steps. He was dressed in a T-shirt, rasta armbands and maroon West Indies tracksuit bottoms. As Richards sauntered out to the middle, chewing his gum, with that familiar rolling arrogant gait, the applause reached a crescendo. Then the toss: Viv won. ‘What you want to do, man?’ he said. Well, we’d like to bat, said Cowdrey. ‘OK man, you bat.’ England lost by 10 wickets and Cowdrey never played for them again.
Now that era has been lovingly captured in a remarkable documentary, out later this year, called Fire in Babylon. It was greeted with a standing ovation when it premiered at the London Film festival, and by more restrained applause at a recent screening with several England veterans in the audience. They, after all, were the ones who fended off the bouncers and took the body blows, and then saw their bowling whacked out of the ground by some of the best batsmen who ever pulled on pads: Gordon Greenidge, Clive Lloyd and of course Richards.
The film is not without faults: it concentrates too much on the fearsome fast bowlers, Roberts, Holding, Croft, Garner and so remorselessly on, and ignores the power of the batsman. There are too many familiar Caribbean tropes: beach cricket framed against a liquid setting sun, giant spliffs and silver-haired elders banging out a jolly calypso about batsmen getting their heads knocked off. It also brushes over the snail-like over-rate of those West Indies teams, and the over-readiness to play the race card whenever cricket’s authorities tried to protect batsmen or increase the tempo of play.
But this is a compelling film and about much more than simply cricket. The emergence of that dominant West Indies team is placed clearly as a reaction to years of colonial oppression. Your batsmen might not like getting bounced, it says, but try slavery.
Richards emerges as one of the coolest men on the planet, then and now, handsome, dignified and extraordinarily brave: he never used a helmet. We now just know the great Michael Holding as the courtly, honey-toned master of the commentary box: in the film he’s this lithe, athletic, elegant weapon of mass destruction, the whispering death launching blistering attacks on the batsmen. It is Holding who sets up the narrative after the West Indies were humiliated in Australia by Lillee and Thompson: disbelievingly, he says that he didn’t know how anyone could play cricket that hard. Well, enter Lloyd and his mean machine and the creation of the team who played cricket even harder.
Anyone inclined to despair at the state of women’s tennis will have got a shot of cheer from the Australian Open final at the weekend between Li Na and Kim Clijsters. This was enthralling macho tennis but without any of the shrieking, charmless muscularity of Serena and the Russians. And their speeches at the end were little gems of grace and humour. Thanks, ladies.
Roger Alton is an executive editor at the Times.
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