In the 1994 Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, esteemed cricket writer John Woodcock paid this wonderful tribute to Ian Botham and his great pal Viv Richards after the legends bowed out of the first-class game the previous summer.
John Woodcock was cricket correspondent of The Times from 1954 to 1987 and editor of Wisden from 1981 to 1986.
With the retirement last season, within a few weeks of each other, of Ian Botham and Vivian Richards, first-class cricket lost two of the greatest of all its stars. Botham and Richards were good companions.
Brought together by cricket, they became firm enough friends to spend a part of their winters going round the halls, exchanging banter with much the same abandon as they showed on the field. They had no particular talent for the stage, I think; but their prowess as cricketers deserves to be remembered for as long as the game is played.
To Botham the colour of a man’s skin was of small account. To Richards it mattered much more; more, sometimes, than was helpful. Botham was quite without artifice. You got what you saw. Richards was proudly and defiantly black. The swagger with which he walked to the wicket, flashing that Rastafarian wristlet; the air with which he looked round the field, the conviction with which he twiddled his bat, the condescension with which from time to time he failed, were all a part of one of the supreme acts in the history of the game. He was stamped with the image of a king. As he ruled, so too he raged, and so, in his tranquil moments, he responded to affection.
Viv was a hard cricketer, but a chivalrous, warm-hearted and unselfish one. In the years of his maturity his love of the game and still-unwavering determination inspired Glamorgan to a season to remember. Botham was just as fiercely competitive, just as chivalrous and chauvinistic, and just as contemptuous of averages.
His marathon walks undertaken to raise funds for leukaemia have been magnificent, and reflect an abundantly generous spirit. He, too, “sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat”. They are two of the immortals, and it is an honour to salute them as such.
