An Interview with Gordon Greenidge
Thu, Oct 27, '16
Gordon Greenidge talks about batting, opening the batting, playing in the West Indies, and limping between the wickets
What were Barbados wickets like when you played?
Quick, with more bounce than, say, in the UK, where I played a lot with Hampshire. There would be a light tinge of green on the pitch, rolled in to bind it.
In Australia, pitches were even bouncier.
Guyana and Trinidad weren't bouncy pitches. Antigua was. Barbados was the quickest of the West Indies pitches when I played. The ball steepled more, which mean a lot of back-foot play.
Your second Test tour was the 1975-76 Test series against Australia, when West Indies lost 5-1? What did you learn from it?
It was a real eye-opener. The way the Australians played the game - verbals, bouncers, batsmen standing their ground until the umpire gave them out, which he often didn't, sometimes even when it was pretty obvious that they were out… It was the sort of tour where either you crack and give up the game or you put your head down and say, no, this will not beat me.
What was the toughest thing about playing against Australia back then?
The Australians were seasoned professionals, hardcore players who didn't give an inch, whereas a lot of us [West Indians] were on our first or second tours. We'd been in India the year before, playing on slow, low pitches. We had to grow up pretty quickly. The feeling was that this lashing we got would never happen to this group of players again.
read the full interview at ESPNcricinfo
