1
- COMMENTARY:
- 'Look at the eyes, the concentration.
'Trying to unsettle the new batsman.
'Yes, this is fast bowling. They really are
'going to get it in at him.'
- 'Oh, it's a good bouncer.'
- 'That is a quick ball.
'When he wants to turn it on, he's quick.'
'Oh, yes, that is a fine, aggressive,
nasty delivery.'
'All of a sudden, these West Indians have
started to turn it on.'
- 'Into the body.'
- 'You watch this.
'I reckon this one'll be straight at the jaw as well.
'Oh, and again, and whizzes past his nose.
This is pace like fire.'
'Shooting up, cutting back, snakes in a long way.'
'Ooh, that is a magnificent ball.'
'The West Indies reckon they're on a roll here.'
'Keep his eye on the ball.
'You've got to keep looking at it.
Look at it. Look at it.
- 'Oh, he's hit him.'
- 'That's hurt.'
'I've often than wondered why
'he doesn't wear proper protection.
That may have broken his jaw.'
'It's beginning to swell.'
'That's not right.
I don't care if you're a West Indian
'or an Englishman. That cannot be right in cricket.'
All the negative things which were said,
a lot of folks felt that we were spoiling the game,
we were aiming to kill. No.
Aggression meets aggression, and that's how I look at life.
You fight, I'm going to fight.
We had a mission, and a mission that we believed in ourselves
and we believed that we were just as good as anyone.
Equal, for that matter.
- COMMENTARY:
- 'All is fair in love and war.'
You know, it was important for me
to try and instil some of this belief.
It wasn't going to take ordinary individuals
to accomplish that.
These were a special bunch who felt the same way,
had the same special consciousness.
It was a magnificent combination.
You're speaking about a group of black
guys being successful
for a period of time. People couldn't imagine
it was possible.
The teams before were still subservient to the English.
They still listened to what the English had to say
about their own game.
We were called terrorists and that's a fact, not a boast.
COMMENTARY: 'The West Indians are a very,
very formidable bowling team.'
It was representing a region,
representing something more significant than just cricket.
It was a matter of a feeling of worth.
We were playing to show our people
that we were going to make them proud.
We were setting standards that future
West Indian generations
would have to aspire to.
That sort of environment that would either
make you or break you.
And you got to make a choice which one you want.
And we always thought that the day will come
when we will beat the rest of the world.
COMMENTARY: He's hit it many a mile.
DOG BARKS
In the West Indies, the greatest cricketer is found.
We, the Caribbean people, on a whole,
have some kind of a knowledge
of how to hold a bat or how to bowl a ball.
Cricket is something that is a daily situation.
We play cricket for the value of cricket.
Hey! Hold on a second. Listen, nuh.
Keep the dog dem round so!
DOG WHIMPERS
Let the dog go round! Let him play with them!
Clap him again! Good!
DOG WHIMPERS
I'm a deal with him, man.
Hey, just let the dog go round so!
That's the kind of spirit that's in the Jamaican people for cricket.
People picture the sunlit islands of the Caribbean
to be a place of paradise.
But things were not always so peaceful.
Our history has been a long and painful struggle against forces
that denied and oppressed us - Babylon.
And only through cricket could we win our freedom.
SHOUTING
SIREN WAILS
In the '60s and '70s particularly,
it was a real revolutionary time
throughout the Caribbean,
that highlighted the tenor and the temper of the times.
Black people were still not regarded as equals.
This whole disparity between have and have-not,
white as have and black as have-not, still existed
in the Caribbean, as in America.
Black power, further, was very much on the rise,
very much part of the upheavals at the time,
to imbibe in black West Indians a sense,
now, of your own power,
of your own self-worth and pride.
BELL RINGS
I taught history.
A young teacher,
involved in the whole revolutionary cosmic.
I had established a very close relationship with Viv.
A lot of those youngsters at the time were very interested
in the black power philosophy
that would be talked about,
and Viv would have been no exception.
That was the time when I think the heat was on
for you to start getting up and standing up,
because of some of the things that you felt were happening worldwide.
There was a journey for us as black people.
Africa had to be the starting point.
The Caribbean people were brought here through colonialism,
to be cheated of origin, culture, will and bravery.
Transmitted by the chain, the lynch and the lash.
Conditioned and trained to be a "nigger."
You are remnants of your ancestors,
for sure. It runs in the blood.
It is a history of a period that one should never forget.
Cricket itself was used as one of the instruments of colonising
and was very much seen as imparting English aristocratic values
to discipline this "nigger."
And now here it is - we have ex-slaves,
trying to excel at something which the English masters had brought on.
We have an avenue to accomplish and that avenue,
it's the God-given talent of cricket.
It's about showing how equal you are,
and proving that you're a little bit
more useful than they see you.
So that's the kind of fight,
that's the kind of struggle,
and they know they have something to do with righting that wrong.
It took English society some time to recognise
that African people felt they were stripped of something
by colonialism and slavery,
and this latest generation want to restore
a dignity what was taken.
This is the age of the major Caribbean territories
asserting their independence - Jamaica in '62,
Trinidad, and Guyana, and Barbados in '66.
Independence was seen as the high point of a civil rights struggle
that had gone on for 100 years.
We had been born in colonial times.
We grew up in independent times.
We started thinking like West Indians
and not like Englishmen
who were living in the West Indies.
We all had ambitions.
We wanted to be something to prove that
we'd evolved from being a slave.
We wanted to show our emergence as a nation.
The existing super-structure has handed out crumbs.
We don't want any crumbs - we want the whole loaf now.
This team is really, in fact, a mouthpiece
for these transformations, reflecting the confidence
of this independence generation.
There's no going back. Cricket has to lead the way,
and we have to go to the future as fast as we can.
To see someone of your colour representing you at that level
gave us folks upliftment.
Those guys were heroes, people that epitomised the struggle.
That was part of the struggle of the Caribbean.
It started to take that side of consciousness,
and I could
identify the pain which our brothers
and sisters would have been through.
Their fight certainly was our fight too.
Through the cricket, we would be able to carry a message
to the white world to abort this racism
by defeating it on the field of play,
by truly making the cricket field a level playing field.
# Cricket, lovely cricket
# At Lord's where I saw it
# Cricket, lovely cricket
# At Lord's where I saw it
# Rae has confidence
# And he put in a strong defence
# Him gave the crowd plenty fun
# Second Test and West Indies won
# With those two little pals of mine
# Ramadhin and Valentine... #
The West Indies are made up of different islands.
All have different governments,
different attitudes towards things.
And those islands only come together
under the banner of the West Indies Cricket Team.
It's the only thing we do together.
We are very different. If you travel the Caribbean,
the accents are different, the food is different.
You experience a variety of things
in different islands.
So our play, our cricket, spoke for us.
Cricket was in. Anybody who grew up in the West Indies
wanted to play cricket for the West Indies.
You would walk miles and miles.
You would find yourself at the beach.
Some match was going on and you would join in.
Guys would be batting from after school until the light faded.
As soon as you get out,
you were back in the water again
or you would be looking around,
trying to help a fishing boat.
When you did catch something worth eating,
you'd tend to light a fire and you ate it.
It was all fun-loving stuff and - wow - have a great time.
Friendship and bonding.
More or less free.
Every time you bowled, you were Lance Gibbs or Wes Hall or somebody.
Every time you batted you were Seymour Nurse.
Sir Frank Worrell, Sir Garry Sobers, Sir Everton Weekes
and all the numerous names.
These guys gave you hope.
Pioneers, for sure. They were the inspiration.
What still persisted up until 1960
was that a white man would always be the captain of the West Indies team.
It was extremely meaningful to Caribbean people to see
a black man now as captain.
It thrilled their heart.
Excellent cricketers will always be in the annals of the world,
but they were not winning combinations.
There were sparks and flashes of genius
followed by droughts of performances.
There was a period when there were 21 test matches -
none of them were West Indian victories.
People would look at us as a happy-go-lucky bunch of people
who just liked to...
Well, the name they had at that time
was Calypso Cricketers.
You may say that it had some good connotations,
because calypso is great music,
but at the same time it had
bad connotations in that it meant that, OK, you were
all fun and frolic, but no real substance,
entertaining the crowd and then losing.
When they left Australia in 1961,
they were given a motorcade
that included a million people from Melbourne.
For losing. In gentlemanly fashion.
We were entertainers but we were not winners.
They always felt at any time we could collapse and had no backbone.
It was felt in the Caribbean. The feeling was,
"Well, keep them the way they are,
so they can just play cricket,
"because maybe they can't do anything else."
We all came from very different backgrounds
and to be moulded into a unit was never going to be easy.
You have to have someone who can keep all those people
from different islands together, and bond them
and get them pointing in the same direction.
In the Caribbean we have a saying,
that ten youngsters thrown together
is not a team - it's a gang,
and there is a fundamental difference.
This latest generation needed a great captain.
- COMMENTARY:
- 'My word, are West Indies looking to him now.'
Clive Lloyd was a very quiet man.
Very sedate, very cool, very calm.
A real thinker.
The players looked up to him and respected him as their leader.
And he was a leader.
He wasn't just a captain. He was a leader.
Clive was someone that you could approach.
You thought, "This is someone I want to play for.
"This is somebody I want to go out on the field with."
He was very conscious of his own family background,
losing his father at an early age.
He was the breadwinner of the family.
Clive was the father.
He just led the way. He was just the man.
Ten years older, to lead in some young boys,
he would mentor them -
he really led them on and off the field.
He instilled that thought process -
that, "Look - we are strong people.
We came from a strong people.
"We came from kings and queens,
"and we will go back to that," which is strong.
We are not here to make fun. We are here to win.
I wanted to have a different team with different thinking.
Shed all the stuff that we had before. We're now a team.
A West Indian team, working together,
so that the young people can understand
that, hey, we can work for a better life and a better future.
One people, one nation, one destiny.
1975 and we're at the start of our journey,
full of youthful ambition and eager to uproot the prejudices of Babylon.
Still we had everything to prove at the top level of the game,
test cricket.
A five-day contest, backed in against an opponent.
Very soon, we'd be facing the toughest test of all,
travelling to Australia to face the champions on their home soil.
Shot one, take four.
# Sweat all day in burning sun
# Aussie pacemen not much fun
# Batsman use Brut 33
# He get 100 runs by tea... #
- ARCHIVE:
- 'Already there's an air of expectancy.
'Their dashing Captain, Clive Lloyd,
is quietly spoken but determined.'
'Are you very confident of winning?'
We want to win. There's no doubt about that.
It has been billed as a world championship,
so I'm hoping that we can give it our best.
At the moment, the Australian side,
to my mind, is the best in the world.
I think that fast bowlers all through test history
have been the difference between a good side and a great side.
Thomson and Lillee are great bowlers.
- ARCHIVE:
- 'Jeff Thomson and Dennis Lillee
'are the most talked-about cricketers in the world.
'The underlying point is controversy.
'Controversy about bouncers or bumpers,
deliberate intimidation,
'aiming to hit the batsmen and bowling bouncers at tailenders.'
- COMMENTARY:
- 'Splendid bowling performance, then,
'from Jeff Thomson. He bowled really fast today,
'as he has done throughout this match,
'a great psychological boost for him
'and the whole of the Australian side.'
'Lillee has struck again.
'Another great performance there by Lillee.'
That cricket team decimated every
other cricket team around the world.
They beat everybody, at home and abroad.
They nearly killed England.
COMMENTARY: 'Thomson to Lloyd.
'And hit badly there that time.'
I remember the English literally running for cover
and begging for mercy.
Australia had outstanding fast bowlers.
And when I say fast bowlers,
I'm talking about people who really bowl fast.
I'm not talking about people who just bowl 80mph, 81mph.
Talking about people who bowl 90mph, 90-odd mph.
Because that extra dimension is
whether you can get hurt or not.
- COMMENTARY:
- 'And it's hit him on the head. A bad one.
'The batsman is down.'
You could get killed. It has happened.
It's like a bullet.
If there's something in front of it, you could be dead.
Now, once you have the capability
of hurting someone with that ball,
that person is not thinking about how to play the ball.
He's thinking about self-preservation.
'I'm trying to scare him, trying to hurt him,'
perhaps in the ribs or the leg or something like that,
so that he at least knows you're around.
Dennis Lee would stand in front of you and...
He stands up, this enormous figure,
and look you in the eye.
He wanted that ball to cause me a great deal of harm.
He wanted to inflict pain. He wanted to injure me.
The one individual that you found just very difficult to play
would be Jeff Thomson.
He was ruthless, in my opinion.
Always a danger. He was a danger man.
- ARCHIVE:
- 'Thomson's sport away from the test match arena
'helps keep him fit for hurling down his thunderbolt.
'It takes a lot of running
'with a zest akin to collecting test scalps.'
- What do you think about that?
- He's a beauty, matey.
He was a mean man.
- COMMENTARY:
- 'My word, it does look a picture today.
'It's always a great moment.
'A nerve-wracking one for some players,
'an exciting one for others.'
It is the test of all tests.
That's why them call it the TEST. Test matches.
To be out in the field for five days,
you have to have the endurance.
The race is not for the swift,
but who can endure to the end.
That's the test. That's the test of every player.
A lot of young people were in that West Indies team.
That was either their first tour or their second tour.
We were green, we were young, we were inexperienced,
thrust into international cricket,
thrown in at the deep end.
You went out and all you could hear,
streaming in your ears, was...
- CHANTING:
- Lillee, Lillee
Kill, kill, kill
Lillee, Lillee
Kill, kill, kill...
You felt that...there can't be a lot of love going on here.
It is in your face.
It wasn't easy, walking out to face those guys,
with the crowd almost on top of you.
Out there, it was a war. Believe me, it was a war.
And they didn't let up.
They threw the kitchen sink,
they threw everything at you.
They let you know, "Well, we're in charge
"You're not coming on our patch to do well."
- COMMENTARY:
- It was a skip fired out of a rifle.
Lillee and Thomson, they bounced each and every one.
People were ducking and falling on their backsides,
trying to get away.
A serious induction into fast bowling.
That was terrifying.
Absolutely terrifying.
I remember Lillee bowling at Lance Gibbs and Lance,
at the end of the day, went to him and said
"I have a wife and kids. Be careful what you do."
COMMENTARY: He's bowled with fire and direction.
- And that has hit him in the face, I think.
- Serious one, I think.
- It got him on the jaw.
- That went straight up.
Injuries, broken fingers, broken shoulders,
cracks on the head,
and it was humiliating.
It was like a military assault on West Indies cricket.
'Bowled in, Lance cartwheeling back almost at once.'
'Another bowl. That was a lovely piece of cricket by the Australians.
'Oh, straightaway.'
'Today... He's out. Jeff Thomson at his best. It's out.
- 'Roberts is out.'
- That was a nasty series.
- Lots of confrontations on and off the field.
- They knew. They knew.
They were seasoned campaigners, and they knew when to turn the screws.
Some of the audience has this way that if they couldn't get you out,
they'd rather abuse you out.
Things were said, and the colour of your skin came into it.
When you're constantly being bombarded with comments
and behaviour, well,
I encountered some ignorance before, but this was very different.
- Very, very different.
- The crowd.
People in the crowd did say things that shouldn't have been said.
Things that weren't politically correct.
People would tell you about your heritage or your background,
or "go back to the trees you came from."
"You black bastard."
I get rather annoyed when you call me a black bastard,
because I'm not.
You'd stop and and see where the comment came from,
and then they would laugh and so on,
because to them, it's a big joke.
It degraded me and downgraded me a great deal.
I was naive when I went to Australia,
and I thought test cricket was a gentleman's game.
I lost it. I just could not believe
that this was taking place.
Michael just went and sat down and couldn't believe
Tears were coming out of his eyes.
He didn't know guys could play cricket like this, so hard.
Yes, there was a lot of bickering,
people starting to blame each other.
Batsmen blaming bowlers.
The bowlers blaming the batsmen.
It was not a very happy dressing room,
and it was not a happy time.
'So there it is.
Australia winning by seven wickets.'
We got a drubbing.
They beat us 5-1.
When the West Indies were annihilated,
that burned everyone in the West Indies badly.
We felt there were tears coming.
I saw people cry
when the West Indies lose.
The tears come down.
Very disappointed, man.
- Very, very disappointed.
- We want to know if we can come back up, when.
People didn't feel the West Indies
players had the fight in them.
This calypso cricket stigma stuck with us.
We weren't willing to go there and fight to the end.
We just gave up.
When that team returned to the Caribbean,
it was like soldiers coming home from war.
They realised that everything was at stake,
and Clive Lloyd knew that West Indian cricket
was at the crossroads.
A lot of soul-searching went on during that time.
Clive as a young captain was under pressure.
He became very depressed,
even questioned his own right to be the captain.
They say after humiliation is riches, power,
might and blessing eternally.
For ever. Go away.
Fight! Fight! It's a game.
You have to put your heart into playing and keep it up.
Don't drop down. Fight.
# Yes! Launch an attack We launch an attack now
# Launch an attack, oh, Mick, we launch an attack... #
I can remember, Clive said "Never again.
"If we can find some fast bowlers
who are just as quick as they are
"or even quicker, see how well they handle it."
Clive Lloyd took a very blunt decision.
"We can also play your game.
"We can generate a bowling machinery that will obliterate,
"that can rub you into the ground and decimate."
# And he bowled, and it's a four # And he bowled,
and it's a six, yes!
So he needed very fast bowlers.
And he went through the Caribbean,
looking for players to fit into his machine.
He had already picked Michael Holding
and saw the talent
and the brilliance of this young man.
And people questioned Clive Lloyd's knowledge.
And they said,
"Clive, you're bringing Michael Holding in at 17?"
Clive said,
"So what? He's a youth, but I like his potential."
The captain was so astute.
Such a cricket brain comes once in a lifetime.
We had three, Wayne Daniel, Holding and Roberts.
Fast, furious, aggressive, and really could dismiss you.
It was very skilfully done. It was a superb construction.
# This is cricket! Lovely cricket, yes! Cricket, lovely cricket
# I say, people, are you ready? Blow! Oh, Lord! #
There has always been a black fast bowler.
The young strapped-in box releasing a thunderbolt at you.
It can become something of a firing line.
When you look at a Michael Holding running in to bowl,
what you were looking at
is an African individual with African rhythm.
Yeah, that rhythm. One in a million.
Born to bowl a cricket ball.
Michael, in that stride,
would put fear into any particular batsman.
I was just a young man running in,
bowling fast, attracting attention.
"Look out for this guy, he's coming."
And he was a hard-nosed individual on the team,
a guy that you were taking the bat anywhere.
I am a warrior.
I take fast bowling more seriously than anything else.
I'd say Andy was misunderstood because he hardly ever smiled
and people thought he was just a grumpy,
miserable guy.
Never show emotions, and nobody knew what to expect.
That was me.
And it taught me a lot about fast bowling.
- Taught me a lot about cricket.
- That guy could jump easy.
He knew how to catch a fish.
And they used to have two different bounces.
The first one, the batsman would sometimes hook it away,
get a boundary. The second one,
with the same action,
same effort, would be a great deal quicker
and of course, the batsman would feel some pain.
He could hurt you, seriously hurt you.
And he was the original leader of that pace attack.
Not long after Australia,
we returned home to play India.
You were eager to banish all humiliation
and show we had the character to win.
For Clive, it was the opportunity
to start loading the newly formed pace attack.
The pressure was on,
and it was to reach boiling point in Kingston.
The whole of Jamaica came to see.
We were packed like a sardine.
There was the feeling that
now we were unleashing this firing power.
"Let's play the type of cricket
that they don't associate us with."
Our guys wanted to show that they learned something from Australia.
How would the Indians withstand our head-on onslaught?
My heart started beating, beating hard.
And they see him running
and then him deliver the ball, right?
We were making India really buckle.
The Indian team was like the walking wounded.
All of them are broke.
Everybody head get lick. You understand?
The Indians thought we were overdoing the fast bowling
and surrendered to the West Indies
almost as a show of protest.
It takes a lot of guts to face fast bowlers.
Most people who don't expect to get hit complain.
Every time I go out to bat, I expect to get my share.
Australia, '75, '76, we didn't complain.
If you can't take the heat
and if you can't take the pace, get out.
I believe that unfortunately,
the Indians were there to receive
the brunt of the revised strategy
and the desperation to restore pride.
What you saw then was a team that had its mind made up.
Do or die. Ask no quarter and give none.
That theory was reinforced
in Clive's mind because of the resource that we'd got,
and I think then people realised,
"Oh, OK, it can work.
"And it has worked."
Beating India was the first sign
we had the firepower to win.
It was a success but it was still early days for the team.
Soon after we had to face our oldest enemy
in the fiercest grudge match of all.
It was 1976 and we boarded the plane to England.
Could we beat our former masters
at the game they created?
This driving ambition was always
towards England specifically,
seeing cricket as the vehicle through
which they were expressing
rebellion against this British colonising power.
We were playing against our old masters.
And therefore we had to up our game
to be able to beat them.
We wanted to show the Englishmen,
"You brought the game to us
and now we are better than you."
The English, as you know,
do adore Test match cricket.
England would rather lose a battleship than a Test match!
We're hearing that, you know, how serious it is.
Beating England was more satisfying to me than anybody else,
because I believed that we struggled more in England
than anywhere else in the world.
As usual in those times,
my family had moved to England in the hope of a better life.
A pathetic sight.
Already their coming has caused a national controversy.
What will they find in the land they regard as an El Dorado?
At 14, having to leave the Caribbean was very difficult.
Arriving in England,
thrust into an environment you know nothing about,
being confronted with a variety of things.
Well, of course, there are far too many immigrants in this country.
We do not have sufficient houses,
jobs and schools for our own people.
Unless something's done quick,
that prejudice is going to be sheer bloody hatred.
There was a vacancy for a flat and on the stairs they were saying,
"All applicants accepted.
"No Irish or blacks."
During the early '70s, I didn't have an understanding
of what racism was all about.
I had no experience of it whatsoever. I was called a wog.
I said, "What the hell's that?"
When guys got angry,
the things you would hear, "You black this, you black that."
You know, at times you felt, well, you know,
"I think I would like to be back in the Caribbean rather than be here."
My anger came out in the way I played.
I felt that to forcefully go at what I was doing, to attack,
perhaps was a way of letting out that anger.
It wouldn't be right to do it on another human being,
although you felt like it at times,
but I am going to sure take it out on 5 1/2 ounces.
So... You just take it out on the ball.
Every little bit of power you can imagine going into that stroke.
My bat could have been my soul at that time,
and it's people who you wanted to put it to.
Everyone wanted to give the West Indian people living in England
something to hold on to.
People who were looking up to you,
who were willing you on for support.
If the West Indies lose, there are even afraid to go to work,
because they know that their workmates will shout abuse,
and they can't live it down.
All they had to boast about was the success of the West Indies team.
It was a step beyond the sport,
where there is a whole other thing
that needed defending,
rather than the cricket ball itself.
People are building the West Indians up.
I'm not quite sure they're as good as everyone thinks they are.
If they're down, they grovel.
And I intend,
with the help of Closey and a few others,
to make them grovel.
Grovel.
- They grovel.
- Grovel.
- To make them grovel.
That wasn't a clever thing to say.
The timing was very, very wrong,
especially given the situation in South Africa with apartheid.
Here was this guy, you know,
apartheid still going strong,
and he's going to make these black guys grovel.
The appetite was there immediately.
Clive Lloyd said,
"Guys, we don't need to say much.
"Our man on the television has said it all for us.
"We know what we've got to do."
We took that seriously.
Very, very seriously took it.
I've not seen our guys so focused.
That comment alone was sufficient to
set the tone for the whole series.
The bowlers, they really turned on the heat.
He made the others suffer for what he said.
'In typical Closey style, he hasn't rubbed it.'
'Oh, my word, Brian Close did well
to avoid a nasty accident there.
'It was really fired in extremely quickly.
'Only at the last possible minute did he manage to get that head
'out of the way.'
'And that's hurt him.
'That's somewhere around about the mark where earlier,
'he let one bounce off him. That really must have stung him.
'Close trying to take this pace attack,
but extremely difficult.
'Enough is enough. He's really overdone the short pitches.'
'Brian Close is going to be a mass of bruises
'when he gets back into the haven of the pavilion.'
'A new row has erupted over dangerous bowling.'
A former chairman of the Cricket Society warned
that unless rules are tightened,
ten cricketers will die and 40 more will suffer brain injury
through being hit by a ball this summer.
The world more or less portrayed the West Indian team as brutal.
Bringing the game into disrepute.
But the adrenaline that's going to be pumping,
the tension that would have mounted from that ill-fated comment,
you're going to release that ball at a serious pace.
There were umpires that, in the laws of the game,
were allowed to act to protect people.
You don't want to hurt someone. Inevitably,
a batsman will get hurt
and you will regret that.
I always feel when I hit a batsman,
the sympathy's in here.
You may not see it, and I can't show the batsman that,
but it's just that I have a job to do.
We're not going to be
these happy-go-lucky cricketers that are only here to entertain.
We're going to entertain by this high skill and whatever it takes,
within the rules of the game,
we're going to do it.
Oh, and that's a fine ball.
Holding strikes again.
We were made to feel at home away from home.
The crowd supported us because of the way we played.
What a magnificent catch that was.
People turned up in their droves,
and one section of the ground
was just all West Indians, and having a ball.
As good a shot as you will ever see.
Everyone said it was
the hottest summer in England for donkeys' years.
Well, I think the heat was felt
by the English, not by the West Indians.
'That's really good bowling from Andy Roberts.'
Spectators could hardly have had better entertainment.
The crowd, more so than anyone else,
took a turn at Tony for what he said.
They reminded him and they kept on repeating it,
so I think he got the message.
Whenever he came in to bat, he would have it.
If they were tired, guys would find
the strength just to make sure.
And it wasn't getting him out caught in the slips,
it was like just knocking his spokes over.
Bang. Wow, those were the special moments.
And a very disappointed, disenchanted Tony Greig there.
You can forgive, but you never, ever forget.
Michael Holding and myself had great summers in '76.
Viv Richards had a great summer in '76.
So it was bat versus ball in '76.
Every test match that Viv played in,
he looked invincible.
A terrific shot. This really master batsman.
The master blaster has arrived.
There was so much talk about intimidatory bowling.
We had a batsman who didn't mind
if you bowled six bouncers at him.
He would not have been scared.
He came and stood his own, you know?
"Take that in your arse, man. Bat, man.
"You have a bat in your hand,
defend yourself," that sort of attitude.
Some said I had a swagger.
It was a sign of saying, "I'm so confident here."
With some chewing gum in mouth,
I backed myself every time.
'What a shot. It's no use bowling this fella.'
He bat against the fastest bowlers
and took everyone apart.
I could knock them back as well.
You'd better get out of the way.
The bowler threw it at Vivian Richards -
instead, Vivian Richards threw at the bowler!
If you wasn't confrontational,
I felt that you were kipping.
And if you wasn't in my face,
you will see the best of Vivian Richards.
# Viv is the name
# Cricket is the game
# But I don't know how he could play cricket so
# But his batting, bowling, fielding,
catching is breathtaking
# Sometimes I does wonder if he's the next Sobers in the making
# That man Richards could really bat
# It's something to see him on the attack
# Plundering bowlers again and again
# It's remarkable how he does dictate the game
# No bowler holds a terror
# For Vivian Richards
# Not Thompson or Lillee
# Not Bedi nor Chandrasekhar Mm-mm.
# A perfect co-ordination of BODY AND MIND!
# That, brother, is really dynamite I tell you
# Pace or spin
# He ain't give a France what you bowling him
# Fast or slowly
# You're going back to the boundary. #
Vivy Richards, a great man.
Wonderful.
We'd come a long way in the space of one year,
from the lows of Australia
to victory against our colonial masters.
Under Clive Lloyd, this youthful team were becoming mature men.
It was a surprise to others and perhaps even ourselves.
Now the big question was whether we could continue our success
and beat the other Test nations of the world.
That question would have to wait.
There was a fight against Babylon on our very own doorstep,
a fight for equal rights and rewards
as true professionals of the game.
For the success which we had then,
there should have been more benefits coming to that team.
The powers of that team should be used as a negotiating tool.
There were issues in getting to the same level of payment
as the same players
playing for England and Australia against the West Indies.
What sort of money do the West Indian team get paid?
I don't know how much exactly they're getting, but certainly
it wouldn't be anything in comparison to the amount of money
that comes through the gate.
Almost all of the cricket boards were headed by Caucasians, whites.
And that might have been perceived as
trying to keep the black man down, if you will.
I don't think it has race to do with it at all.
Power is a numbing thing, it's like a drug.
As players, we were very upset
that the West Indies Cricket board had short-sold us.
After sport, you have to live.
What they were paying to play cricket could not make me live.
We were exploited in such a degree that we were a laughing stock.
We weren't some people who cheat and steal.
But then suddenly, the possibility presented itself
to challenge the establishment.
It was called World Series Cricket.
'A revolutionary new development has come onto the scene,'
organised not by the traditional authorities,
but by an independent Australian businessman,
Kerry Packer.
The result has been official apoplexy.
I fail to see how his business-type piracy
is welcome to our cricket.
They are the lowest-paid team sport,
practically, in the world
and they are entitled to the reward that their skills demand.
So here's a man like Kerry Packer coming and saying, "Look, guys,
"we want to pay you what you're worth."
Kerry decides he's going to get the best Western cricketers,
the best Australian cricketers
and the best of the rest of the world to play
a three-way tournament in Australia.
The win money was 30,000.
It was so far superior to what we were accustomed to,
it felt like VIP. And I said,
"Well, for this sort of money I can think about playing cricket.
"Show me where to sign."
The proverbial whatever-it-is hit the fan.
The West Indies Cricket board saw us as rebel players.
We were all banned from playing for the West Indies.
We had no cricket to come back to.
We felt like outcasts.
We were now on our own. We even thought at one point
that we may never ever play for the West Indies again
and we just did not feel good about that.
What would have happened to us? What would become us?
'After all the publicity, all the uproar, the haggling,
'the start of the Packer series was a fizzer.'
# Money in my pocket but I just can't get no love... #
'The players took to the field in front of only 500 spectators,
'leaving the stadium all but deserted.'
Kerry realised that
the success of World Series
depended heavily on the success of West Indies.
There was one game that we played
and we got bowled out cheaply.
He came into the changing room
and put a tongue-lashing on us.
"Gentlemen, you are wasting my time.
"I could get rid of you immediately.
"Qantas 001 leaves here every afternoon
"and some of you could be on it.
"Unless you pick up your game,
"we are going to have to send some of you home."
Kerry Packer demanded professionalism.
He demanded a professional outlook,
on not just your cricket but on life, and we let him down.
And everything change from that day.
Here we have a bunch of guys now who
realise that there's no tomorrow,
there's only today, and nobody wanted to give up.
We then bonded together because that's all we had.
We had each other.
That family feeling, that ultimate one-for-all,
all-for-one, pervaded.
# I'm gonna put on a iron shirt
# Put on a iron shirt... #
Kerry Packer assigned Dennis Waight
to the West Indies team
as our physiotherapist/trainer.
And he went to Clive Lloyd and said,
"Skipper, I do not think that this team is fit enough."
And that is when we started to train.
Dennis was a fit, strong man.
He would run to the ground from the hotel while we took the bus.
He pushed us to the limit, I mean, madness.
We were fit at all times.
If we weren't fit, we were glad to get fit.
'Quick single.
'Having to hurry. And he's in the stops, he's gone!'
This team became the fittest Test team the world had seen,
coming against a tradition of pot-bellied unfit cricketers.
The fitness led to superb displays of catches,
incredible endurance,
there was a spectacle.
'Oh! No comment needed.'
It was highly intense cricket,
the hardest cricket I've ever played.
Every team had at least five genuine fast bowlers, every team.
Every day you wake up,
you know that the cricket is going to be harder than the day before.
That whole tournament itself had to change your whole psyche
to getting fitter, winner takes all,
being in that zone to be as mean as anything else.
'Superb shot by Richards. Hit mightily hard.'
There were a lot of things introduced.
Coloured clothing. West Indies were in pink.
The press had a field day when they saw our uniforms.
"Pretty In Pink" and they went
so far as saying, "The Poofters In Pink"
So we had to show them that we were not that way disposed.
- Shot!
- From then, to the end of World Series Cricket,
we did not lose a game.
Here comes the stampede!
And the Australians have always suggested that Kerry Packer
ought not to have come in to make that speech to the West Indies.
Even though you were playing as well as you think you are,
and winning as much as you are,
there was still something very much missing.
COMMENTATOR: The West Indies crowd goes absolutely mad!
Absolutely mad!
One thing I find with West Indian supporters
is that they're loyal, love to see West Indies win,
they love to see good cricket.
But one of the things they do not like is to see administrators
lie to them.
The supporters wanted to know why we were still banned.
They wanted their best players back.
Our continued fight against the Board was the same fight
our people faced against our politicians.
Despite independence, inept leaders still robbed us of wealth
and benefits - dividing the islands for their own ends.
In Clive's team,
the people saw a model for co-operation and unity.
Our sympathies were shared and we united as one.
We were the heroes of the West Indian public,
because we were standing up
to our establishment Board.
More and more people recognised that the strength
was in getting together.
What our politicians could not achieve, we did.
When we were playing and we got on that field,
we put aside all the differences
and issues which the islands had -
uniting that region together, where, collectively, everyone could
speak as a unit.
The public were all unanimous
in calling for boycotts of West Indian games.
It did so much for Clive to recognise
that he was accepted as the leader,
not just within the team, but throughout the Caribbean.
The timing was right
and the West Indian Cricket Board's hands were tied.
They had to bring us back.
We came together and stuck together.
Clive returned as the undisputed leader of our cricket.
No longer would politics divide our people
and we would all share
in the fruits of the West Indies' success.
And that same nucleus, which was a real family who really gelled,
came back into traditional cricket and it felt as if, yes, we had
had really achieved something.
We were a much better team,
fitter team and that is what turned us into professionals.
From then, I never thought we could lose a game.
Joel loved his cricket. Joel Garner and I
forced our way into the team
and the bowling changed for West Indies.
The media were very interested because, for the first time ever,
you had four fast bowlers who could all bowl at over 90mph.
Michael Holding, Andy Roberts, Joel Garner and Colin Croft. Ha-ha!
Colin Croft.
We were called "the four horsemen of the Apocalypse".
We were called terrorists, dangerous, murderers,
all sorts of things.
These guys were physically intimidating.
Joel Garner, at six foot eight.
And he was always coming either
at your toes or up at your neck.
Hit him.
That is the enemy out there,
those fellows wearing pads, with a bat.
It was my intention to make life for them very uncomfortable.
Colin Croft, him have an action you can't understand.
He's a menace to society!
I was scary. I know that.
You knock a guy down with a bouncer
and you smile and you laugh.
"I am here, get out of my way."
We ask, "Croffy, suppose your mother was at the other end batting?"
He says, "Boy, if my mother was at the other end,
she's a target."
Andy was a hit man, and labelled "The Hit Man",
just because he was hitting people.
I hear people say that I was The Hit Man.
I didn't go out to try to hit people.
It's just that a lot of people get hit.
Colin Cowdrey,
Sadiq Mohammad, Majid Khan -
all depressed fractures of the cheekbone.
And he was so feared.
They all had their different styles,
but Michael was called "Whispering Death".
The umpires wouldn't hear me coming.
They had to keep on looking behind,
to see if I was actually running in.
And I suppose the "Death" came from the pace at which I bowled,
that it could create death.
The team, by 1979, was stronger - much, much stronger.
We were on top of our game, all of us.
Superb. Premium.
That's professional sport at the highest level.
The West Indians came
and said to the cricket culture,
"Listen, cricket can be spectacular.
"It is art."
We were becoming a force,
politically.
They were saying, "This is a West Indian product."
They are showing on the world stage,
coming out of the so-called Third World can be excellence.
There is a wind of change.
"Let's be better than we've ever been."
We are on our way to victory,
of good...over evil.
Clive Lloyd, you know you're the man.
Colin Croft - one to the head.
Six to the chest.
# Cricket, I'm a sports fan people know that
# Bowled me a ball and people know that
# Go! Clive Lloyd Him hit the classics
# Score - Garner and them saints
# Aka! Michael Holding bowl the ball like Saddam, Saddam
# Watch it! That's why Clive Lloyd called me The Cannon.
# Holla, colla! Man, I'm real Jamaican.
# You know we're better than the rest.
# Crow about. #
We were made to relive
'75-'76 in Australia.
Every time the highlights were shown of one of those Test matches,
you were never given the change to just put it in the back of your mind.
They kept on focusing on what happened.
It was so important for those of us
who had been part of the defeat in 1975
to have the opportunity to put that right.
At that stage, Australia were officially number one in the world...
still.
The West Indies had never won a Test series in Australia,
so this would have been breaking new ground.
We must beat Australia at all costs.
It didn't matter how we did it - ugly, nice.
We had to beat them - psychologically, physically,
every other adverb you could use.
We were ready.
CHEERING
We encountered similar problems that we had in '75-'76,
They'd walk past you or come down the track and say...
- "... off," you know?
- "Piss off" or "You're a wanker."
You know, you're coming in to bat. Before you get there,
Dennis Lillee will say, "I'll knock your effing head off.
"I'm coming for that."
And Lennie Pascoe, at one point,
said he hoped I was going be a hospital case.
That's now taking the game to a different level.
They thought when they threw it,
we were just going to fall over and die
and remember what happened before, but it wasn't like that.
It was a completely different story.
Hits it away! Cuts hard and high.
They were taken by surprise.
I wasn't a helmet man. I didn't wear
all this protective gear.
I knew that there'd be a lot of forces who'd be looking to get me.
The message that I sent is that I'd rather die out there.
The only how I'm going to be not here is if I'm knocked out.
Oh, nasty blow! Nasty blow.
Everyone was thinking,
"Oh, hell, Viv is going to be damaged."
And we were expecting Viv to be walking off the field at some point.
You cannot afford to let your opposition know when you are hurt.
They'll stand up and look you in the eye
and I'll look back and we have
this little staring match for a while.
You know you'd got the better of them.
By the time they turn around
and passed the umpire and get back to their mark,
they will take a look around again to see if you're still looking.
I'd be still looking.
That's when they know that you're serious.
The bouncer coming next ball.
- What an answer.
- And the very next ball, he hit out of the ground.
Look what you've done, you know.
You've just pulled a lion's tail.
They were saying, "kill" for too long,
and when Australia done that,
it just motivated our players
to get pretty mean.
Oh, he took one to the heart. A nasty blow.
That was a blow that would hurt.
And Joel Garner saying, "You can wear that one."
The four guys who we let loose on them...
He's caught that one, as well.
- ..were just too much.
- It's been a painful day for the Australians.
The same Australia who were so aggressive,
all of a sudden, were crying.
Can you imagine that, from an Australian?
I could not believe it.
The harder they come, the harder they fall.
When we had the pace and the pace gets
real hot, they would touch it and they would walk...
..because the pace is real hot.
We were talking about a peace truce.
That peace truce probably lasted
for about a game and then it was back to normal again!
But that is how far it went, at that stage.
We kept the pressure on them and hammered them into the ground.
Bumped them out again.
Wow. That, I think, was special.
It felt as if we had really achieved something.
We had learned from our experiences
and now proven ourselves at the highest level.
It really was a feeling that West Indies cricket has now
come of age and we really are the best team in the world.
# Ooh, yeah!
# Well, all right!
# We're jammin'. #
This was the first time the West Indies
have produced something which was the best the world had seen.
Here we are, several dots on the map,
dominating the world.
It's difficult to describe the feeling now.
There was joy beyond words.
We're on a high. It's celebration time.
Everything was working out to perfection.
We went to Pakistan and were the only team
to beat Pakistan in Pakistan...ever.
We went to India and beat India.
Again, that's the only team to have done that.
West Indies bowling was poetry in motion, at that time.
We have never seen it since.
We just wanted to win everything. We wanted to win every game.
We put our feet on them, kept them down and beat them.
HE LAUGHS
You can't beat a team like that.
How are you going to beat a team like that?
Then, West Indies began to win so consistently.
It triggered a pride in the workplace,
in the way we dressed,
in the way we went into studios and recorded.
African culture had been criminalised
and driven into the ground for 300 years.
At the first opportunity to be free, to express itself,
it comes up to the surface and it comes back there again.
And suddenly, we have this extraordinary emergence
of culture in the Caribbean.
Bob Marley and the Wailers,
Jimmy Cliff, coming with aggression,
abrasion and a force of change.
To combine that with the West Indies cricket success...
Unbelievable.
They thought that we were heroes,
but to me, THEY were heroes!
Bob Marley comes to dressing room, telling you you've got to win!
"Right, Croft, man, we got to get these men out quick."
Brilliant. It does appear that this forever be the most
productive time of our lives.
They start to boast. Instead of being ashamed,
they can wave their flags and say,
"Our heroes made us look good."
All these tunes are totally inspiring stuff,
sounding the protest bell.
# Get up, stand up
# Stand up for your rights
# Get up, stand up
# Stand up for your rights. #
Stand up, stand up, to me, it's not a crime.
It is about standing up for what you believe in
and you walk until it feels
and it's totally embedded in your mind.
Your battlefield music.
I will never, ever forget Viv Richards.
As I speak about him now, I can picture him right there.
In his heart burns the custom,
culture of Rastafari.
He was Rastarised,
but a lot of people didn't know that came from him
having to do with Bob Marley. He'd always find himself
in the company of The Wailers.
Had he not been involved in cricket, he would have surely
have been a dreadlocked Rasta man!
HE LAUGHS
Real deal!
Viv was very, very much the darling of Caribbean peoples, you know?
He was really the extension, philosophically of Clive Lloyd,
taking it now to a further consciousness
of spiritual, religious thought.
Viv was really becoming into the fullness of identity as an African.
Even his armband that he wore showed the African colours.
The green for the land itself.
The yellow for the gold taken away and stripped away.
The red meant the blood that was shed.
Those particular colours and what it meant.
Take time out and play this one
for our brothers and sisters in South Africa.
African people, unite, man!
REGGAE SONG PLAYS
Tune, brother!
There was a great sense of sympathy
for the struggle for independence in Africa,
be they Mozambique, Zimbabwe or South Africa.
The anti-apartheid fight, the anti-colonial fight,
was very much part of the Caribbean struggle also.
You felt seriously embodied with the folks
who were suffering in South Africa.
This human injustice taking place for so many years.
It was a real sense of horror.
Black people were being just shot down
mercilessly and particularly those Alsatian dogs
running through Soweto, biting up people et cetera.
It brought tears to the eyes of Caribbean watchers, man.
There was always the feeling
that we could do everything to assist them,
not only in song and in cultural expressions
but in the field of cricket also,
in imposing sanctions against South Africa.
17 West Indian cricketers are to play in a country
which has been banned from international cricket
because of its apartheid policies.
So that it was a great abhorrence when some of our cricketers
defied the sanctions and played in South Africa.
This is a major propaganda coup for South Africa.
The fact that they are black will be seen as giving some credibility
to the South African regime.
Most Caribbean people were in shock.
How can you go and support a regime like that?
As Pankhurst said, every man has his price.
Money is everybody's god, let's be honest.
You had to look after yourself.
The team is believed to include Colin Croft,
lured by the 70,000 contract.
Former Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley said
the rebel players were mercenaries.
I'm a mercenary?
When I went to world series cricket,
was I not a mercenary then?
I'm not sure I understand the differences.
It's not a game. It's my livelihood.
This is my job.
We wanted to know, "Who else is going?
Who else are they after?"
Every man has his price. How he conducts himself will determine
how he will rate in history.
Well, it was an open cheque, basically,
for my figure at the time.
If I had signed then,
then I think we would have had the exodus.
I think West Indies team would have dismantled at that particular period.
I felt that I had to show some leadership,
not going to the apartheid regime in South Africa.
I will not go.
They cannot pay me enough money.
The sacrifices Viv Richards made is really heroic.
I see a serious correlation between Muhammad Ali and Viv Richards.
One throwing away a medal,
refusing to fight an unjust war, and the other
refusing to take a million dollar cheque from an unjust society.
One of the things on the table was that whilst there,
you're going to be an honorary white...
How can a black man be an honorary white man?
What is wrong with the colour of my skin?
What is wrong with my ethnicity?
Why should anyone tell me I've got to be an honorary anything
apart from what I am?
These guys have sold out having
now accepted the term "honorary white".
If they paid them enough money they'd be
willing to even accept chains
on their ankles. I was disgusted.
Those rebel cricketers were
bringing down the wrath of our ancestors
and they were bringing down the curses of the African spirits
by having betrayed the cause of African rebellion
and of African liberation.
I had an incident in South Africa.
I was asked to remove myself from a train carriage
because it was for whites only.
That's... It's not fine.
A lot of people can say, well, I embarrassed the Caribbean.
I take whatever comes with it.
West Indian cricket authorities have banned its players
who defied an international boycott and gone to play in South Africa.
They were destroyed. Their career were toned down,
their respect was...you know...
to the dust, to the garbage.
Caribbean people just ostracised them,
just cast them out the map totally.
Their lives were generally made very miserable.
Nothing good ever came of many of them.
Some of them were thought to have gone kinky,
getting hooked on cocaine or other debilitating drugs.
That's another devilish curse.
I had heard that some of the players who came back
were badly treated.
I had heard that some of them had fallen on hard times.
But when I came back from South Africa
I didn't come back to the West Indies, I went to Florida.
It hurt to not be a part of that team.
Being able to walk down the street, hold your head high -
that was better than millionaires. That was better than gold.
These guys will always be my friends
regardless of the decisions that they've made in life.
I'm not in any position to judge anyone,
but the jury's out there.
I met Desmond Tutu and he said
Nelson Mandela appreciated what
the West Indies was doing at the time.
Thank you so much in helping
to dismantle the apartheid regime
and helping the afflictment
of some of our struggling brothers and sisters.
When I heard that, I was rather moved.
Wow. They knew who we were
and they knew exactly the part you played.
We felt very appreciated, yeah.
The struggle goes on.
Even though you are winning as much as you are,
you've got to be so aware and be watchful.
That's when the evil side of things
and the racism can easily catch you off guard.
You stop taking the punches now and start giving some.
All of a sudden, some have a problem with that.
Every time there have been successful black expressions
be it culturally, sporting or politically,
there have been attempts to bring it down.
The English press have always been very, very, VERY damaging.
How we suffered the amount of pressure that
the English press used to put us on.
I loathe it. I think this cricket is rubbish.
What you're doing is you're staging a human coconut shy.
Some of the players thought the level of criticism was racial.
Because they couldn't get to you, colour was always the next thing.
I don't suppose they expected the success to have gone on so long.
They just thought that "They'll fall soon.
"A couple of years,
then they'll be back where we know them to be."
They wanted the old-style West Indies of entertaining and losing.
When that changed,
all of a sudden people didn't like that idea.
This is the body armour required against the West Indies.
Self-preservation is the name of the game.
We're never given credit.
We were always being looked upon as though
our success was mainly through intimidation.
Those other things will make me lose my cool.
People who didn't have fast bowlers were the ones who were critical.
'Jimmy Adams has a chance under it. He's caught it!'
Let no one fool you. Everyone wanted to have fast bowlers the way we did.
Everyone.
There was jealousy. It went to the very top.
The English people in authority started
to restrict the West Indies,
different rules and limitations
on how you can bowl the ball.
It was just too much.
They did everything to stifle the success of West Indies cricket
and they always thought that they would kill us.
Going to England in 1984, we wanted to send the message
that when we are hurt, we'll come out fighting.
The drive against England, it was a matter of making sure that
what we started, we were going to finish.
"Can we do it again? Let's go out there
"and prove that the first one wasn't a fake."
A great occasion of the summer - England and the West Indies.
Two teams locked in battle.
'A very, very important stand, this, for England.'
England had very good players during that period.
Some of the best in the world.
And some fiery exchanges out there.
They could compete.
So much immense pressure.
The English were saying that this is the best chance to beat us.
It was a "who would draw first blood?" situation.
- 'Great shot.'
- 'A good start by England.'
'Then Botham breaks through.
'Lovely display of aggression.
'And Allan Lamb goes to a century.'
That Test match at Lord's,
they were in the ascendancy.
'The West Indies deep in trouble now.'
I can remember wondering to myself,
"Are we going to win this game?"
Facing the fire.
It was pressure for me.
"Is today going to be my day?"
All these things would have gone through those years of hurt
now have to be put in focus.
MUSIC: "Could You Be Loved?" by Bob Marley and the Wailers
'That's an extraordinary stroke.'
'And that went off like a rocket.'
'The West Indian spectators are delirious.'
When Gordon is at his best,
I tell you, it's brilliant to watch.
And that day at Lord's, you know, he just looked unstoppable.
He was just in awesome form.
Flying it on all parts of the ground.
I applauded him all the way back to the pavilion.
214, not out.
And what seemed to be an almost unstoppable assignment
has turned out to be an absolute doddle.
And I think that was the defining moment that we felt
that we could come from the brink,
regardless of whatever.
We were now fighters. We didn't know when we were beaten.
Nothing was too daunting for us.
And out of that spirit emerged this
youngster called Malcolm Marshall.
Once Malcolm Marshall went out,
you knew that he was going to produce.
CHEERING
Malcolm was a guy who just exuded
this sort of sort of brilliance.
The future of bowling was always there. That was Malcolm.
Malcolm Marshall bearing a double fracture.
He broke his hand, it was in plaster.
I said, "You think you can play with that?"
He said, "If you want me to, I will."
To see him come out with one arm in a plaster of Paris,
I think made him a giant of a man, really.
Here was a guy who is in excruciating pain running out
to bowl at the speed of light. Then goes out and bats.
And won the game for us.
That showed the spirit of our team.
The statement made, you know, just very, very powerful.
'He needs his glasses to believe this.'
It's not just the man out in the field bowling the ball.
Him trying to get the opponent.
It's the man watching the radio who says
we are going to bowl him now.
We have to get him now.
And I have seen this happening.
# Dem thump him in the belly and him turn to jelly... #
Boo at the man!
- There's the genuine bouncer.
- Gone, him gone! Him gone!
How is that?
- A real whirlwind out there.
- Seeing the stumps flying,
- feel like the game going to be over.
- That was top-class stuff.
Big noise in the place, man. They get what they want.
'No fun, I can tell you, for any England batsman.'
That's the kind of unification.
That's the kind of willpower that the people developed.
# And crash, I'm dead. #
You have just seen something totally brutal
and all that it needed was the finishing touches.
At the end of four Test matches, we were 4-0 up.
We could have taken the foot off the gas.
We never played cricket like that,
not the team I had played for anyway.
# Don't let them fool you... #
We were humiliating them.
We were really making them grovel
by their not being allowed to win even one Test.
# Or even try to school ya... #
There was this feeling that we could be looking at 5-0.
- The vibe starts.
- 'He's gone mad.'
I run down with this flag.
Everyone went crazy.
You're talking about a tremendous amount of energy.
I can imagine the noise on the various islands.
I could feel the passion the people felt.
Botham's gone.
All these guys had a very special message.
I think we are an equal power in here.
Babylon - it's not a place.
It's a practice that is unrighteous.
Me not rating you because of your colour,
not treating each other as human beings.
That is Babylon.
The English had difficulty
in recognising what West Indians had done for cricket.
But guess what, I think they came to like it.
This was going to change the game for ever.
And it was going to bring value.
That is what you call cultural exchange in its finest sense.
Live for yourself, you live in vain.
Live for others, you live again.
One love.
They're a part of us, whatever we did,
whatever we achieved,
we brought a lot of powers to people.
To the people who were struggling.
When we defeated England,
beaten them at every Test in the series,
represented a reversal of our humiliation
and our full flowering as a cricketing power.
Even from changing it from whitewash
and calling it now "blackwash".
Black is beautiful. Black is bright.
That to me, epitomised everything that we represented
the bravery, wanting to succeed.
A true West Indian feeling.
There was a lot that we had to overcome.
We did not complain and here we are,
one of the greatest sporting teams
in the history of team sports.
To be around people who you had
an enormous amount of respect for,
and to have been able to do that with them,
is special, yeah.
All right, let me cut it short.
This was like slave whipping the asses of masters.
These are rare moments in one's life.
Especially with the struggles that
one would have been through.
- It is history that you will never forget.
- That is what it was.
# I see your face in front of me, still grainy
# From that old black-and-white TV
# My whole family's silent,
watching you shape destiny with your two hands
# Faster than the eye can see now
# Mesmerising. #
An undisputed fact that between February/March of 1980,
and February/March of 1995,
the West Indians did not lose a Test series. 15 years.
They did not lose a Test series.
And no other sporting team in any discipline anywhere in the world
dominated their sport for 15 years.
And we are very proud of that.