The CW50 - No.8

[The Sean]

A Richards memory that I have firmly in my mind is the last ball of his 189 in that one day match. Where the bowler bowled him a yorker on leg stump. And Richards went on to the back foot - lifted up his front leg and dog legged the ball over the boundary for six. Mind Boggling.

Edit - I tried to find this on Youtube - and found a clip of him hitting the last ball of that inning to long on. So maybe this shot happened in a different inning.

You're thinking of his 138 in the 1979 World Cup Final.

 

[Days of Grace]

My keyboard's in Braille, tbh.

Incidentally, as a Richards point of discussion, why does he seem to get a free pass on the dodgy ending of his career, where other players seem to get marked down for theirs? I know the "how" is probably as important as the "how many" with Sir Viv, but it does seem slightly strange the consensus on him is so near universal. Statistically he has to bend the knee to Javed Miandad, an almost exact contemporary, and did he even make the CW top 50?

I think that for English and Australian viewers Richards is etched in the mind a lot more than Miandad, since Viv played, and performed brilliantly, against English and Australian sides much more often.

Many of Miandad's great innings for Pakistan were probably not avaibable for live viewing back then.