Viv Richards

Some Lesser Known Facts About Viv Richards

• Does Viv Richards smoke?: Yes

• Does Viv Richards drink alcohol?: Yes

• When he was born, Antigua was a dependent territory of Britain, formerly known as the British Leeward Islands.

• He started playing cricket at a very young age.

• His brothers, Mervyn and Donald were cricketers and played as the amateur cricketers for Antigua. They encouraged him to the cricket.

• In the beginning, he used to practice with his father and uncle.

• When he was 18 years old, he left school and started to work at D’Arcy’s Bar and Restaurant in St. John’s.

• Owner of the restaurant, D’Arcy Williams, helped him a lot and provided him with new whites, pads, gloves, and a bat.

• He spent some seasons with St. John’s cricket club, later, he joined Rising Sun Cricket Club.

• During his era, he was considered most powerful batsman with an extremely attacking style.

• He was very famous for punishing the bowlers who dared to sledge him, for an instance, during a county match against Glamorgan, bowler Greg Thomas taunted him ‘its red, round and it’s about five ounces’ after Richards missed few deliveries. Richards hit the next ball for six out of the stadium into the nearby river and commented ‘you know what it looks like, now go and find it.’

• In 1981, his book, Hitting Across the Line, was published. In the book, he described how his whole life got around sports, particularly Cricket.

  

• In 1983, Richards tore up a blank cheque given to him by the South African Cricket board to play for a rebel West Indies team touring apartheid South Africa.

• From 1984 to 1991, he captained West Indies for 50 test matches and won 27 of them, only 8 lost.

• On 31 May 1984, playing an ODI match against England, he rescued West Indies from a very precarious situation, he scored his career’s highest score of 189 runs. He made 106 runs partnership with the last batsman of the team, who scored only 12 runs.

  

• One of the most interesting facts about his 17 years long cricket career is that he never wore a helmet while batting.

• In 2000, a 100-member panel of experts named him among the five Wisden Cricketers of the Century. He got 25 votes, behind Sir Donald Bradman (100 votes), Sir Garfield Sobers (90 votes), Sir Jack Hobbs (30 votes), and Shane Warne (27 votes).

• In 2010, he was featured in a documentary movie Fire in Babylon and spoke about his experiences playing for the West Indies.

• Richards is often heard on BBC’s radio programme ‘Test Match Special‘.

• He became the mentor of Delhi Daredevils for the 2013 IPL.

• He has also mentored the Quetta Gladiators in Pakistan Super League from 2016 to 2018. 

• The Sir Vivian Richards Stadium in Antigua has been named in his honour.

• Viv Richards and English Cricketer Ian Botham are very good friends, they have been friends for more than a decade. He is also a godfather to Botham’s child Liam.