When I watched Viv Richards turn a night of rum into a morning of mayhem and interviewed Courtney Walsh as Brian Lara walked at 91

Viv Richards in a belligerent mood during his half century at Chepauk in the 1974-75 Test series. I had watched him smack a brilliant 192 in the second Test in Delhi.

The West Indies I knew was very different from the team India will see later this month during a white-ball series. They had great players, fearsome fast bowlers and larger-than-life characters. What stays with me most, though, is how close we were allowed to get to them. As a young journalist, I watched them from the boundary, met them away from the field and sometimes sat beside them as the game unfolded. The access, like the cricket, was different then.

My memories of the West Indies begin before I even became a journalist.

I remember reading about the 1967 Test in Calcutta (now Kolkata), the trouble on New Year’s Day when players had to run from the ground to the safety of the iconic Great Eastern Hotel, and the story of opener Conrad Hunte and the West Indian flag. It was later clarified that Hunte had not saved the flag himself; a policeman had. The story stuck anyway. It was a series I followed through radio commentary, keeping my own scoresheets. It was such fun. Many years later I stayed at the Great Eastern on a reporting assignment, wondering which West Indies player had occupied the room allotted to me.

The 1974-75 series is where my memories properly start. I watched Viv Richards make 192 at the Feroz Shah Kotla. He was dropped on 12, a catch the whole ground was certain of, missed only by the umpire. He went on to add 180 more runs. There were sixes landing outside the stadium; one went into the neighbouring Ambedkar Stadium. Nobody had seen hitting like it.

I was also at the ground, not yet a journalist, in 1979 when Kapil Dev scored his first Test century. He had resumed the third morning on 94 not out (after a Rest day) and reached his hundred with a six. I was fielding, in a manner of speaking, at fine leg among the spectators.

Those years gave us Gavaskar too: 121 at the Kotla in the 1983-84 series, a rare attacking innings from him, and then 236 at Chennai, batting at number four after walking in at 0 for 2. Viv would joke that no matter which position he batted at, Gavaskar would always walk in with 0 on the scoreboard.

By 1987, when Patrick Patterson was touring, the papers ran story after story simply on his arrival: Pato is coming, Pato is coming. One Indian Test player, obviously peeved, asked me at the time whether the press was Indian or West Indian, given how much we seemed to be building him up. There is an anecdote from the same time when Raman Lamba, a dear friend, invited me to a private session he was having at the Kotla with a West Indian stalwart. What a surprise it was to watch Richards having a long nets session and also share his expertise with Lamba. Our staff photographer, SK Arneja, had enviable access to the great Richards and must have taken more than 100 pictures that afternoon. In the same Test, Sanjay Manjrekar had to retire hurt in the second innings when hit by a Patterson delivery. We did not have a picture of the incident, and after the day’s play was over I took (photo colleague) V.V. Krishnan to Taj Palace and requested Manjrekar to oblige us with a picture. He stood at the door of his hotel room, and Krishnan got his picture. We enjoyed such a relationship with the players then.

West Indies cricketer Patrick Patterson being given a traditional welcome at the Taj Connemara in Madras (now Chennai). Also seen in Augustine Logie. | Photo Credit: The Hindu Archives

Facing the fast bowlers

Indian players of that era were not so much afraid of getting out cheaply against the West Indies bowlers as being hit despite the protection. You had to be at your very best, like Gavaskar, Mohinder Amarnath, GR Vishwanath, and Kapil. The dashing Srikkanth would go after them regardless. Gavaskar was close to flawless. Kapil played attacking cricket against anyone.

On India’s 1989 tour of the West Indies, I heard from more than one source that some players, batsmen and bowlers both, were relieved not to be picked for the XI. These stories were well known in cricketing circles but were never written about at the time. Dilip Vengsarkar came back from that tour and criticised the team for playing short-pitched bowling poorly, singling out Mohd Azharuddin in particular, though Azhar had in fact scored runs against that same attack.

Mohammad Azharuddin is airborne as he tries to play a shot during the first ODI against West Indies in Bridgetown on March 7, 1989. West Indies won the match by 50 runs. | Photo Credit: The Hindu Archives

The West Indies pace attack of that period was Malcolm Marshall, Curtly Ambrose, Ian Bishop and Courtney Walsh. Facing all four in one series was, by any measure, an unequal contest. Just like taking guard against Andy Roberts, Joel Garner, Michael Holding, Marshall and Colin Croft in the preceding tours, not to forget the unpredictable Sylvester Clarke in 1979. Spinners had almost no place in the West Indies XI by then, Lance Gibbs being the exception from an earlier generation.

Off the field

Away from the game, West Indies players were relaxed company, though it never affected how they played.

In November 1987, the West Indies were in Chandigarh to play India Under-25. On the eve of the match, the former board president IS Bindra hosted a party for the team, as he often did. I was there with a small group of journalists. Late in the evening, one of the local journalists challenged Viv Richards to “bottoms up”, a full glass of neat rum to be finished in one go. Richards agreed. Desmond Haynes and Gordon Greenidge, standing nearby, chipped in too. Both men drank three-quarters of a large glass of rum each and walked to the bus visibly affected.

The next day, Richards and Greenidge took the Under-25 bowling attack apart at Sector 16 Stadium, a large ground, hitting the ball out onto the road outside on several occasions. Bowlers including Pradeep Kasliwal, Sanjeev Sharma and Jaspal Singh, all decent young cricketers, were treated like club bowlers. It said something about the team. They enjoyed themselves off the field, but it never cost them on it.

I knew the umpires, SK Ghosh and PG Pandit, well. At the end of the first day, I had dinner with them. Even they were in awe of Viv and Greenidge.

Two interviews

Two interviews from those years still stand out for me.

The first was Brian Lara in 1994, when he refused to speak to anyone. The liaison officer for that series, Dr Ravinder Chadha, a former North Zone captain, put in a word on my behalf at Sector 16 Stadium, telling Lara that I worked for the best newspaper in the country (The Hindu). Lara agreed to meet me on a terrace adjacent to the dressing room, and gave me the interview there.

The second was Chris Gayle, in Jodhpur in 2002, as his kit was already being loaded onto the team bus after a match in a series in which he had already scored three centuries. I had put in my request at the nets on the eve of the match. I introduced myself again after the match got over. He asked me to wait, came out of the dressing room five minutes later, and suggested we sit inside the ground itself so we would not be disturbed. He gave me the interview there.

Chris Gayle was named the Player of the Series after scoring three centuries and 455 runs during the West Indies ODI tour of India in 2002. | Photo Credit: The Hindu Archives

Watching the greats

I grew up reading about Gary Sobers and got to meet him personally when he visited the National Stadium in 1985 to interact with the trainees of Dronacharya coach Gurcharan Singh. “Your headline should be `cricket is a side-on game,” Sobers had insisted. I vividly remember Clive Lloyd’s 242 not out at the Wankhede Stadium in the fifth Test of the 1974-75 series.

The stylish Alvin Kallicharran was a batsman we would go to the nets specifically to watch. I stood behind those nets before I ever carried a notebook, and I could barely follow the fast bowlers, let alone imagine how the batsmen picked up the ball in time to play their strokes. One story from that period is worth telling properly.

In Pune in 1978, during a game against an India Under-22 side, Kallicharran asked a member of the India squad to teach him a respectful greeting in Hindi. That player, as a joke, taught him a cuss word instead. Kallicharran, unaware, used it to greet Tiger Pataudi at a function that evening. Pataudi recognised at once what had happened and gently corrected him. On the field, these players were fierce competitors; off it, they were on easy terms with the Indian cricketers around them.

Lara walks

During the Mohali Test in 1994, Brian Lara walked when on 91, caught by Nayan Mongia off Venkatapathy Raju, even as umpire S. Venkataraghavan took his time to raise the fateful finger. At that moment, I happened to be interviewing the captain of the West Indies team, Courtney Walsh. My colleague and ace photographer Krishnan had arranged the meeting. We sat on the ground, with the match continuing in front of us. In fact, it was also the Test in which Walsh broke Manoj Prabhakar’s nose with a delivery that went through his helmet grille, forcing him to retire hurt. Anyway, this is not the kind of access that would be possible today.

Courtney Walsh floors Manoj Prabhakar during the Chandigarh Test in the 1994-95 series between India and the West Indies. Prabhakar was struck on the nose by a Walsh delivery and had to retire hurt. | Photo Credit: The Hindu Archives

That series came just months after Kapil had played his last match for India, an ODI against West Indies in Faridabad in October 1994. It was, in its own way, another marker of an era passing.

Kapil and Sunil Gavaskar were the two Indian cricketers most respected by the West Indies for the way they played, as much as for what they scored. Old footage of a Gavaskar dismissal shows the regard the fielding side had for him. Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Azharuddin, and Sourav Ganguly later earned similar respect.

Kapil Dev drives Phil Simmons during the first ODI against the West Indies at Nahar Singh Stadium, Faridabad, on October 17, 1994. It was his final ODI for India. | Photo Credit: SANDEEP SAXENA

On India’s 1996-97 tour of the West Indies, I watched Navjot Singh Sidhu score a double century at Port of Spain, with VVS Laxman opening the batting and making two fifties in that series.

It was Sachin who arranged my second Lara interview on that tour, telling him he had to speak with me. In 2002, Gavaskar did the same for a Viv Richards interview. “Will speak later,” he promised, but I was not convinced. Richards, to my delight, sought me out in the press box afterwards and said Gavaskar had told him he had to talk to me. Both interviews appeared in Sportstar.

Sachin Tendulkar pulls Cameron Cuffy during his 85 in the first Test of the Director’s Special Series against the West Indies at Wankhede Stadium, Bombay, on November 20, 1994. West Indies wicketkeeper J. Murray, with Brian Lara and Carl Hooper in the slips, is seen in the background. | Photo Credit: THE HINDU ARCHIVES

The end of an era

During Tendulkar’s farewell series against the West Indies in 2013, I was asked to cover both Test matches and file a Tendulkar story every day. The Mumbai Test finished in three days, which made the assignment simpler, but it was, by any account, a proper send-off for a great player.

With Sachin Tendulkar on one side and Viv Richards on the other during the 2002 West Indies tour of India. It was a memorable privilege to be around two of the game’s greats. | Photo Credit: Special arrangement

What has followed since has been a decline that has affected everyone who played through that era. Gary Sobers spoke about it before he died, and Lara has said the same. Greenidge, by his own account, rarely watches the team now. Andy Roberts and Curtly Ambrose lament the sight of West Indies struggling to put up a decent XI, and Marshall, the menacing match-winner, is no longer alive. Courtney Walsh does most of his cricket work outside the Caribbean.

A Test match in the West Indies used to be defined as much by the crowd, marked by music and dance in the stands, as by the cricket. That atmosphere is largely what has been lost.

With my colleague and dear friend V.V. Krishnan, who helped arrange my interview with Courtney Walsh in 1994. He has been a constant presence through my journey covering West Indies cricket.

Perhaps that is why the memories remain so vivid. They are not only memories of runs, wickets and great players. They are memories of a particular cricketing world: of packed grounds, intimidating fast bowlers, batsmen who seemed to have more time than anyone else, players who could enjoy themselves late into the night and then destroy an attack the following morning.

None of this would have been possible without the journalists and broadcasters on the other side of the boundary rope, particularly Tony Cozier, who loved Indian cricket as much as his own and hosted us at his home in Barbados on two occasions. Tony Becca and Joseph `Reds’ Perreira, both highly respected in their own right, were part of the same years and deserve mention here too. They regularly contributed to Sportstar too. They were years when West Indies cricket felt less like a visiting team and more like a world of its own, one that Indian cricket was privileged to encounter at close quarters.

No story of West Indies cricket from those years would be complete without Lester Armoogam, a die-hard cricket fan who travelled with the team, India being his favourite. He was heavily built, widely respected and a big hit with the players. The West Indies Cricket Board would give him a season pass so that he could watch the matches. In 2002, we did the same, giving him free access to the venues.

He travelled with us by train from Jamshedpur to New Delhi. It was great fun listening to his stories. ‘Uncle’ Lester was not simply a spectator who happened to follow the West Indies. He had become part of the travelling cricket world around the team, familiar to players, journalists and officials alike. He died in 2004. I am sure ‘Uncle’ Lester would have been a depressed supporter of West Indies cricket had he been around. West Indies cricket would best be remembered and represented by characters like Lester Armoogam, who became part of the fabric of the travelling team.

Published on Sep 18, 2026

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