I love watching Viru: Viv

CHENNAI: Like WG Grace, who replaced the bails and resumed his innings after being bowled first ball of an exhibition match, Sir Viv (no surname needed), too, would have went and told the umpire “They have come to watch me bat.” He catered to the crowd as much as to his freewheeling soul.

The closest modern-day clone of the West Indian legend, he himself reckons, is Virender Sehwag. “He is just as brutal, and I love to watch him bat. He has a style and a sense of purpose, and I wouldn’t want to be a fast bowler bowling at him. He is one of best players of fast bowling,” he remarked.

In an era of searing fast-bowlers, with no bouncer restrictions, Viv restrained from using helmets. “The chewing gum was my helmet. I felt out of my comfort zone if didn’t chew. Using it is all about your comfort, and somehow I was uncomfortable using helmets,” he recollected.

Modern batsmen, he feels, are donning their armour as if preparing for the tilting yard, human frailties camouflaged behind the padding and helmet. “Unlike other guys like a Geoffrey Boycott, I didn’t believe in using protection as a form of staying power to go on as long as possible. That’s the worst way anybody can be thinking, that you should cover yourself in a suit of armour, to make yourself brave, or to enable you to hook – when you never hooked in your life – just because you’ve got a helmet on. Even though they say cricket is a gentleman’s game, it’s a man’s game,” he specified.

That he would have reveled in T20 cricket goes without saying, but he advises youngsters to misgiving it as the ultimate in cricket. “It’s fun, but you shouldn’t think it as the ultimate in cricket because of the money. The game has a great history and that history is Test cricket. And if you are a good Test player, you can be good T20 player as well. But not the other way round,” he said.

He also believes that T20 cricket hasn’t eclipsed the 50-over format. “This World Cup is keeping the spectators glued to it. So I don’t think it is the end of 50 over cricket,” he said. A largely fulfilling career, the 1983 World Cup final loss to India regrets him most.

“Soon after the World Cup, we beat India 5-0 at home. But if you ask me, I would give you those five matches for a win in that final,” he said.


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