Cricket: Going in to bat for bowlers

By RICHARD BOOCK

For someone who spent the majority of his playing years obliterating opposition bowling attacks, Barry Richards may not spring to mind as the man to lead a "Bring back the Swing" campaign.

The former South African batting great, now television commentator, was one of the bowlers worst enemies through the 1970s, breaking all sorts of run-scoring records in English county cricket and impressing in his short stint on the test scene.

Yet his chief cricket concern these days is the fate of the genuine swing bowler, that attacking pace option who used to pose so many problems in years gone by but is now about as well-established as the white rhino.

Richards, no fan of the batsman-friendly pitches being prepared in the modern game, puts the decline in swing bowling down to a combination of the shirt-front surfaces being used around the world, the influence of one-day cricket, and the vast improvement in bat manufacturing.

"Batsmen are coming hard at the ball these days, so bowlers are having to bowl a different length than they did maybe 25 years ago," he said yesterday.

"They're bowling a yard shorter, banging the ball into the pitch - that's why no one's swinging it much now. They're trying to drive the batsman back in their crease because if they pitch it up to guys like Matthew Hayden and Graeme Smith it goes for four or six."

Now 58, Richards said he could sympathise with the bowlers, who were effectively being asked to bowl one length for the shorter game, another for tests, and invariably erred on the side of bowling short.

The resulting problem was, the ball had little time to swing and an attacking option was being lost.

"That's one of the biggest differences today, and it probably can be linked to the development of the one-day game," he said.

"They play so much one-day cricket, and get used to bowling that length. That's why you find so few guys swinging the ball.

"The white ball swings for a while, and maybe later if it starts reversing, but genuine swing bowling has been in decline since the days of Wasim Akram."

Cut short by South Africa's sporting isolation, Richards' four-match test career nevertheless offers a glimpse of what the rest of the world missed - 508 runs against Australia at 72.57, and seven innings in early 1970 that brought consecutive scores of 29, 32, 140, 65, 35, 81 and 126.

Forced to play county cricket until World Series Cricket exploded on to the scene at the end of his career, Richards showed that his test record was no fluke, appearing in 339 first-class matches and scoring a staggering 28,358 runs at 54.74, including 80 centuries.

Known in his time as one of the most elegant right handers to have played the game, he managed to score nine of his centuries before lunch, 1000 runs in a season on 15 occasions, and it is claimed that he once batted through a Durban club innings using only his leading edge.

Which is quite a feat when it's considered that the bats being used in the early 1970s were often unwieldy, poorly weighted, had smaller sweet spots and edges about half the width of the present variety.

"We didn't use as heavy bats, we probably weren't as physically strong as today's players, because most of us were part-timers."Bats are now better made, better shaped, better weighted and have outstanding pick up, whereas ours probably weighed the same but had smaller middles and little, thin edges."

It worried him that the advancement in equipment and pitch preparation was stacking things in favour of the batsman, and he was pleased to see "sportier" wickets in New Zealand, guaranteeing that a batsman's technique would be properly tested.

No fan of statistics or records, Richards said he could see far more value in Smith making 80 in difficult conditions at Christchurch than someone blasting 150 on a road, and used New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming as another example.

"If Fleming had played most of his cricket in the sub-continent his average would've probably surged from the mid-thirties to about fifty. We'd be talking about him as one of the all-time greats.

"But because he's got to cope with tracks that do a little bit on a much more regular basis, his average is down and he's just one in the bunch and that's where statistics can be extremely misleading."

Richards said Fleming had played some brilliant, match-winning innings and could not understand how people could compare him with some of the flat-track bullies around the circuit.

"It's stupid, it's ridiculous - I think Fleming's a much better player than people give him credit for."

Barry Anderson Richards

* Born July 21, 1954, Natal.

* Part of South African schools team that produced fast bowler Mike Procter.

* Scored 28,358 first-class runs at 54.74, including 80 centuries.

* In four tests against Australia, scored two centuries, two half-centuries and averaged 72.57.

* 1969 Wisden Cricketer of the Year.

* Opened the batting for Hampshire with West Indian stroke-maker Gordon Greenidge.

* In 1970-71, scored 356 for South Australia at Perth, including 325 in a single day against an attack comprised of test bowlers Dennis Lillee and Graham McKenzie and England spinner Tony Lock.

* Joined Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket in 1977, scoring 554 runs at 79.00.

* Described by Sir Donald Bradman as "the world's best-ever right-handed batsman".

* Became Queensland cricket's chief executive in 1983, after which the banana-benders won the Sheffield Shield twice.

* Biggest criticism: That he found the game too easy and became bored.