...including the great Vivian Richards, who endured a poor run in the first four of the six Tests in the Australian summer of 1975-76 before hard yards at practice and a chat with sports psychologist Dr Rudi Webster brought about a sizzling revival
Sir Vivian Richards at the Coolidge Cricket Ground in Antigua on November 20, 2018. Pic/Getty Images
Batting slumps afflict the best of willow wielders. And Virat Kohli, who has endured a poor run of scores in all forms of the game recently, is no exception.
ADVERTISEMENT
In between his unbeaten 41 against Punjab Kings on March 27 and the 48 he carved against the Mumbai Indians on April 9, there were scores of 12 and five against Kolkata Knight Riders and Rajasthan Royals, respectively. Then came the 1 (against CSK), 12 (against Delhi), ducks against Lucknow Super Giants and Sunrisers Hyderabad before Tuesday’s 10-ball nine in his second clash of the season
with the Royals.
At the time of writing, his team, Royal Challengers Bangalore are in the top five on the IPL-15 points table with five wins just like Sunrisers and Lucknow. RCB seem to be coping all right with Kohli’s lack of runs and that will probably be the only positive for their former captain.
Kohli is often spoken in the same breath as Sir Vivian Richards and the great West Indian endured the agony of being short of big runs in one particular series—the 1975-76 one in Australia where Clive Lloyd’s men suffered a 1-5 shellacking at the hands of Greg Chappell’s rampaging team.
Before the start of the fifth Test in Adelaide, Richards’s tally for the series was a feeble 147 in seven visits to the crease. It was felt that Richards’s anxiety of waiting to walk in to bat was getting to him. Whether that was the real reason for him opening the batting in the tour game against Australian Capital Territory and Southern New South Wales Country in the build-up to the fifth Test cannot be ascertained because Richards, in his autobiography, said he offered to open the batting. But he came up with a 93 off 138 balls and followed it up with 160 and 107 not out against Tasmania at Hobart. And in a 40-over game against the same state before the Adelaide Test, he smashed a match-winning 99. As expected, his numbers improved and his last four innings of the series across the Adelaide and Melbourne Tests yielded 30, 101, 50 and 98.
Doubtless, Richards worked hard for his revival. From playing his first series against India who had the best spinners in the world to the hard and bouncy tracks of Australia demanded some level of adjustment. He was also aided by a chat with fast bowler-turned-sports psychologist Dr Rudi Webster, who was a radiologist too. He put Richards through some drills to improve his concentration and the Antiguan got his mojo back. As Richards said in his book, “I improved both my concentration and my batting.”
Of the 24 Test centuries Richards slammed in his career, his second one—the 101 in Adelaide on the tour—would have been one of the most cherished. Frank Tyson, the ex-pace terror, who took up journalism, wrote about Richards’s first hundred against Australia in glowing fashion. “There was no lingering in the nervous nineties for Vivian Richards. Two thunderous, lofted drives back past the bowler brought him to his first-three figure score against Australia in 166 minutes. It was only his second Test hundred but it was one to remember since his innings contained no fewer than 17 fours.”
Richards’s 101 at Adelaide was followed up with 50 in the first innings of the sixth and final Test at Melbourne. He attacked all the way in his 54-ball innings, which ended when he played defensively to Dennis Lillee, only to be caught behind by Rodney Marsh. In the second innings, he played every shot in the book but embraced a cautious approach when in the nineties. Greg Chappell held a cut shot at first slip and Richards walked back to the dressing room for the last time on that nasty tour for 98, which would prove to be in vain as West Indies lost by 165 runs. Tyson wrote: “Richards departed as a member that of that elite band of batsmen who had come within spitting distance of a century only to find the wind of fortune in their faces.”
The year 1976 was a great one for Richards. He rose from the depths of despair at the start of it, he burgeoned India in March and April (556 in four Tests in the Caribbean and 829 in the same amount of Tests—yes, you read right) in England from June to August.
When it comes to batsmen with some level of ability—and Richards had oodles of it—bad trots are followed by revival and I dare say, that is imminent in Kohli’s case too.
mid-day’s group sports editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stance.
He tweets @ClaytonMurzello. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
