Sir Gordon, the Southampton jewel

An autographed poster of Hampshire’s West Indies star Gordon Greenidge adorns a wall at the Orbit Centre, the photographers room for the just-concluded ICC World Test Championship final between India and New Zealand in Southampton. Pic/Bipin Patel

While savouring the picturesque Hampshire Bowl on television during the India v New Zealand ICC World Test Championship final, one also thought about Hampshire cricket. More specifically, the West Indian stars who wore the county's colours in this order - Roy Marshall, Gordon Greenidge, Andy Roberts and Malcolm Marshall.

Greenidge, who served West Indies cricket from 1974 to 1991, attained knighthood in his native Barbados a few days ago.

Apart from his 12,692 international runs, Greenidge, in the opinion of several pundits, was the hardest hitter of a cricket ball. His strength to hit the ball far can probably be traced to the late 1960s, during his early days with Hampshire.

In his autobiography, The Man in the Middle, he revealed that he went to live with his UK-settled mother and talked about the difficult times he endured at school in Reading.

He faced rampant racism in school and it took an incident for things to improve when he got into the Hampshire set-up in 1968 as a member of the ground staff. A few youngsters were marking the crease in preparation for the following day's county game, when they noticed Greenidge in their midst. They decided to cover him with whitewash. When they tried to "paint" his private parts, he managed to get free and took hold of a spade, which was lying around. The threat of using it on them was a serious one, so they backed off and never again was Greenidge the "butt of racial jokes".

Runs were hard to come by in Hampshire Second XI colours and his poor fielding added to his woes. The fear of not getting another contract was inescapable and Greenidge decided to take his cricket more seriously. He trained with weights and ran many a mile on the streets of Southampton to get fitter. A policeman once discovered him running late into the night and questioned him. He was only convinced that Greenidge was on the streets for the right reasons when the local police station confirmed that there were no robberies reported that night. Greenidge went on to perform so well for Hampshire that he could play for England, but he chose the West Indies and figured in his first Shell Shield season for Barbados in 1972-73, while continuing to grace Hampshire turf. The right-handed opener seemed to relish English conditions and on his first Test tour to England in 1976, he plundered 592 runs at 65.78.

Greenidge also enjoys an eventful cricketing connection with India, scoring hundreds in the opening Tests of two of his three Test tours here. In fact, he nearly got a century in both innings of his debut Test - 93 and 107 in 1974-75 - and 194 at Kanpur in 1983.

Greenidge's poor performances in the 1975-76 series Down Under caused the selectors to drop him for West Indies' home rubber against India in 1975-76. Greenidge was part of World Series Cricket when they toured India in 1978-79, thus he could only resume his Test battles with India against Kapil Dev's tourists in 1983.

In the fifth and final Test at Antigua, Greenidge ended Day Two with seven not out, while partner Desmond Haynes was on 14. That evening he received the news that his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Ria was in coma with a kidney ailment. He endured a sleepless night and resumed batting the following day to score 154. He left the field and headed to Barbados to be with his daughter. Ria passed away two days later.

I reproduce here a part of my April 2013 story on that heroic innings, played under intense personal pressure: "In a rare interview, Greenidge, spoke to this writer about his darkest off-field phase: ‘Ria was an old soul. She could carry out a conversation with grown-ups and you wouldn't believe a two-and-a-half-year-old girl could do that.'

"The next time he played a Test against India (at Kanpur later that year), he scored 194. He said: ‘Maybe, Ria was trying to tell me something. When you reach a situation like that, you either labour over it or try and pick up the pieces as soon as possible. If you don't do the latter, the situation will get the better of you.' "

Greenidge, it can be recalled, was the first West Indies wicket to fall in the 1983 World Cup final, shouldering arms to a Balvinder Singh Sandhu inswinger. The following year, he made up for his Lord's flop by stunning David Gower's Englishmen with a chase that yielded 342 runs, scored inside three sessions; 214 of them coming from that broad Symonds blade. The Greenidge effect on West Indies cricket didn't end there. Another double century was carved in the same series at Old Trafford and there were two more before his Test career ended in 1991.

Unwavering focus is one of the reasons why Greenidge sits well in the Sir category with former teammates Viv Richards, Clive Lloyd, Andy Roberts, Richie Richardson and Curtly Ambrose. Southampton should be proud too.

mid-day's group sports editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stance. He tweets @ClaytonMurzello
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