Viv's Example by Chris Searle
Quote:[size=10pt]At the Headingley test match during the frigid English June of 1991, I was watching the progress of the West Indies first innings. It was late afternoon, and by that time much drinking had been done around the ground. It was a cold, cold Saturday, which had been warmed by two inspirational pieces of cricket from the young Ramprakash, a newcomer to the England team whose family roots were planted first in India and then in the coastal lowlands of Guyana. He had first launched himself sideways to take one brilliant catch, then minutes after thrown down the stumps from mid wicket after a lightning pick-up to create another wicket from nowhere. Those two electric acts had sparked the cutting atmosphere of the iciest cricket-watching day that I can ever remember.
At about 4:30 in the afternoon, however, it was the time of Viv Richards. As he strode out to the wicket with his implacable gait, unhelmeted and unperturbed by climate, crowd, match conditions or apparently anything else around him, a lone and dreadlocked West Indies supporter standing near the players' steps let out a loud cheer and Caribbean words of brotherhood and encouragement. The bond and magnetism of his cry was urgent and powerful. A group of white spectators standing near him, carrying their lager cans, slurring their words and grimacing their aggression, turned on him and Richards too with curses, racist insults and crude provocative gestures. He stood his ground as Viv always did, giving back everything piled upon him until other spectators intervened and warned off the insulters.
Now Headingley is certainly not the most friendly or hospitable ground in England for black cricketers or their supporters. Yorkshire cricket, in its adminstrators, and followers have often been as cold as this June Saturday in receiving and recognizing the talents of black cricketers. The 'no foreigners' approach to Yorkshire cricket, and its century-long refusal to allow anyone not born in Yorkshire to play for the county before it opened its doors for prestige overseas players like Sachin Tendulkar and Richie Richardson, has meant that still not one single cricketer from the squads of excellent black cricketers playing every weekend in the leagues and inner cities of Yorkshire has been selected. Many of these, disrespected, excluded and ignored, have gone to form their own teams and leagues to play against each other, and have thus been forced into a Jim Crow cricket arrangement in the cities and old mill towns of northern England.[/size]