World Cricket

For nearly half a century after becoming a Testplaying nation, their stylish, hard-hitting batsmen, fearsomely fast bowlers and energetic fielders made them formidable cricketers but never a formidable side. How the West Indies, a uniquely supranational array drawn from over a dozen former colonial possessions, transformed themselves into a near-invincible team in the mid1970s that not only demolished all competitors, but brought pride and hope to an entire region and its diaspora, is a gripping story that far transcends sports.

Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards, Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Joel Garner, Malcolm Marshall, Desmond Haynes, Gordon Greenidge and more have become legends, both individually, and as a team which became world-beaters and in doing so, extinguished the last embers of colonialism and its colour bar in an essentially colonial game, as cricket writer Simon Lister shows in this book.

But the rise of the West Indies, who became champions in the then new shorter version of the game when they won the first World Cup in 1975 but later that year were outclassed 1-5 by Australia in a Test series, looked far from inevitable – were it not for three separate events in separate series, as Lister contends.

One was during this tour – and it is with this defining moment during the fourth Test in Sydney that Lister begins. A young fast bowler, who was playing his first series, broke down after thinking he had obtained a prized wicket but the umpire remained still and Ian Chappell, despite his initial inclination and a whisper of conscience, stood his ground. But batsmen would soon learn