West Indies, cricket's finest, take on England

 West Indies, cricket's finest, take on England.

You always knew where you were when the West Indies came over to England to play cricket. It was a time when warm summers seemed to last indefinitely and the calypso beat was almost too sweetly melodious. John Arlott, that most distinguished of literary observers on the game, must have thought all his birthdays had come at once. Arlott loved cricket's grammar and vocabulary, its verbs and adverbs, its dignified place in the English sporting calendar, its nuances and sudden shifts in mood, its romantic flavours when the sun set on Lord's and Sir Gary Sobers brandished his bat with a chivalrous flourish. We knew that cricket was something to be rolled around the tongue like one of Arlott's huge cellar of wines.

This year, it's happening all over again and not for the first time. It is almost half a century since the West Indies last boasted one of the greatest cricket sides ever to grace England's ennobled county grounds and the Test circuit. The West Indies have gone into hibernation for quite some time now. It is hard now to recognise the West Indies whose remarkable and august cricket teams just ground teams into the dust with the kind of majestic cricket that none of us thought we'd ever see again. Now though the West Indies are whipping up a different kind of Caribbean recipe, hoping that the old habits haven't deserted them.

Back then it was all too easy. As soon as the touring West Indies had set foot on the hallowed turf of Lords before progressing to Old Trafford, Headingley, Trent Bridge and the Oval, the warning signs were always there. The dark maroon caps settled themselves in the respective pavilions of England's most beautiful grounds and, suddenly, you were in the presence of greatness and magnificence. You were privileged to be among the cream of the crop, a sumptuous concoction of breathtaking batting and blissful bowling. The West Indies had arrived and that normally meant that a carnival was about to descend on our town.

It's hard to remember now, but at some point during the 1970s- a summer had displayed its fullest and richest plumage. It must have been the last and sixth Test at the Oval and the gasometers of Surrey's most striking ground would provide the most extraordinary backdrop to any cricket match. In those days, the Oval always seemed to have the longest outfield and the boundaries seemed to stretch for miles. West Indies had already cleaned up with emphatic victory over England in the Test series but the images remain indelible.

Away in the far corner, huge crowds of jubilant and ecstatic West Indies fans spent the entire day, celebrating the nation's unsurpassable brilliance and lordly pre-eminence. It was almost as if you were watching cricketing royalty where the thrones of command were occupied by West Indies genius. Wearing yellow and orange beach shirts, the bare chested supporters from Antigua, Barbados, St Kitts, St Thomas and Trinidad and Tobago jumped up and down almost incessantly from early morning to late evening tea time.

Sport can always be relied to provide us with memorable moments, the places where we witnessed almost Olympian perfection, when time stood still, the West Indies encapsulating everything that was good and complete about sport. By the time the West Indies had left the field at the end of day's play, you knew you'd seen the finished article. It was cricket at its purest, most refined and accomplished. It was cricket that had been fashioned and designed by its most delicate materials.

But we knew what we'd seen. We'd heard about it in Wisden, cricket's bible of facts and figures. We'd seen it on the BBC, in all its beauty and finery, knew about it from Test Match special on Radio Three who captured its essence, its art form and acres of literature. And yet from early morning to tea time, BBC One heightened our senses, awoke us to a glorious awareness of those bold characters who would defy the odds and roll out a whole carpet of centuries and double centuries.

We didn't have to travel far to see the West Indies. They dominated that summer from yesteryear, their cricket an epic revelation, a huge breath of fresh air, sport as it should be performed and displayed in front of its discerning spectators. For this is what it was. Geoff Arnold and John Snow from the gasometer end, faced the spectacularly gifted Sir Viv Richards, Gordon Greenidge, Rohan Kanhai, Alvin Kallicharran, towering batting forces in the game, mighty hitters and just unstoppable at times.

And so it was that both Richards and Greenidge bounced out of the Oval pavilion shortly after breakfast and we knew what was going to happen next. They would crouch on their haunches briefly, stretching their flexible joints and just going through the motions. Then Richards and Greenidge would tug on the maroon cap, shaking their shoulders vigorously and then just concentrating on the task in hand. You knew that both would wreak their destructive havoc because there was a wise and enlightened glint in their eyes. They knew what would follow next. England would simply be helpless onlookers.

Richards would just hook the ball imperiously into outer space deep into the heart of the Surrey stockbroker belt. He would swivel his body effortlessly around before cracking the ball into alcoholic taverns next to the Oval entrance and exit. Then there were the thunderous on and off drives that flew, skimmed and floated across the Oval's fast outfield and had to be retrieved by a search party. Viv Richards imprinted his mastery all over a cricket pitch and none could touch him. Then Gordon Greenidge joined in with the fun and by now the England of Geoff Boycott and John Edrich were just picking up scraps.

The dominant figure of the day was, of course the West Indies captain Clive Lloyd. Not for nothing was Lloyd affectionately referred to as ' The Panther' since he moved like one. Legs that went on for ever, Lloyd would stand at mid wicket, tall as a skyscraper, hands reaching into the air, clapping, coaxing and cajoling his team. Lloyd was one of cricket's shrewdest of tacticians, a man of acute insights into the game, a strategist of the highest order, scheming, thinking ahead, gesturing and pointing in the right direction. 

Most of us would be spellbound by the West Indies, surely one of the most riveting of all spectacles whenever a cricket match was about to unfold. Today they begin their latest exhibition. For England, this has been a particularly poignant week for English cricket. The legendary Jimmy Anderson will retire from the game after the Test matches ahead and a powerful light is about to go out for England. Anderson was just a model of reliability and never disappointed.

But for those of us who thought they'd seen everything in the summertime game of cricket, then maybe we had. The West Indies were our favourite team and simply made the game look so effortless. Never did arrogance ever stain their shirts and trousers, just a casual insouciance, an approach that was both brutal and yet stunningly effective, a way to win that was natural as breathing, eating, living and drinking.

We will follow their exploits because we suspect that we might have missed something. Maybe there are stirrings of a revival, a period of rehabilitation that finally bears fruit. There has to be another Richards, Lloyd, Kalicharran, Kanhai and Greenidge in the making. It's been far too long and we've been patient for too long. But the West Indies will triumph again and how we've missed those steel drums ringing out those exotic rhythms, those captivating calypso beats and an enduring love of the game. The best is yet to come from the Caribbean kings of style.