It’s true that there was a bit of a feeling that we could get some kind of result when we went to the Caribbean in early 1986. We’d beaten Australia the previous summer and all our batsmen had got runs. All the names were there: myself, Gower, Beefy, Gatt, Lamby.

Ian Botham was full of self-confidence and bowling particularly well, a class act as a lively swing bowler. But generally speaking the ball doesn’t swing in the West Indies. It gets roughed up so you don’t get much lateral movement, and this was before we knew anything about reverse-swing. It was a bit of a mismatch: they had four cannons, we had three pea-shooters and a spinner. We got absolutely blown away.

Viv had the greatest presence of anyone I have seen on a cricket field, the way he projected himself, the way he walked out to bat, the body language which had a touch of arrogance, the supreme self- confidence. And he intimidated a lot of bowlers before they even bowled a ball at him. His nickname was ‘Smokey’ after Joe Frazier, and he was built like a boxer. He had immense power. With the bats that players use nowadays, he would be a seriously valuable cricketer.

This was an explosive innings, full of his trademarks: on-drives, pull shots – he was the best puller of a cricket ball that I have ever seen, rocking on to the back foot and picking it up quickly – drilling it through mid-wicket along the ground and through the air.

There was a prison just outside the ground, and you could see the bars at the top of the prison. Viv was bombarding the prison, and some of the prisoners were going wild, rattling their metal plates and cups against the bars. Every one of our bowlers was going around the park. Botham was bowling to him with three men back on the hook and Viv was putting it over their heads regularly.

As you can imagine, all this was a great delight for the crowd, though not so much for our bowlers. When you go to the West Indies now, most of the crowd are English, but in those days there were a lot of locals in as well. Down to the left of the pavilion they had a big music centre and every time Viv hit a boundary they would switch it up to full volume. One of their songs was The Sinking Ship. “Captain, the ship is sinking…” It was a carnival atmosphere.

It was an amazing feat to score a hundred off 56 balls. And Viv didn’t go out there and unwind and tee off. He just picked off our bowlers.