Photo Credit: Cricket West Indies
Today we send birthday greetings to one of our icons – as we wish Sir Viv Richards a Happy 72nd Birthday. The man rated among the Top Five players of all time was born on this day in 1952 in Antigua. He represented Antigua and Barbuda at cricket and football, and later played first-class cricket for Leeward Islands, and had a stellar career on the international stage for the West Indies.
Sir Viv thrilled fans all over the world for close to 20 years. He made his debut in 1974 in India and ended in 1991 as captain on the tour of England. He was the most dominant figure in the game when the West Indies was the most dominant team in the world.
Sir Viv had so many memorable performances and we can’t list them all here, but two that spring to mind happened when the West Indies won the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup in 1975 and 1979.
In the first final at Lords, he ran out three Australians as West Indies won the coveted trophy for the first time. Four years later he made the monumental 138 not out as we beat England again at Lords to lift the Cup a second time.
In Test cricket, he scored 8,540 runs with 24 centuries – the highest of 291 against England on the 1976 tour which he dominated.
In ODIs he had no equal as he amassed 6,721 runs with a top score of 189 against England in 1984. Overall, he made 36,212 first-class runs and was one of few players to score over 100 centuries.
Cricket West Indies (CWI) governs cricket across the West Indies, a confederation of Caribbean countries. Originally established as the West Indies Cricket Board of Control in the 1920s, it became the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) in 1996 and was rebranded as Cricket West Indies in May 2017 as part of a restructuring effort.
