Viv: 'I Know What a Dartboard Feels Like'

At 50, former West Indies batting great Sir Vivian Richards looks like he could still do some damage in the crease. Imagine Marvin Hagler with a bat. And then picture him knowing how to use it. Style meets menace.

Bowlers around the world once feared the powerfully built Richards, who remains a striking figure with hawk nose and shaven head. Today his role is chairman of selectors for the West Indies Cricket Board. It's a demanding job.

The West Indies, who in Richards' late 1970s and 1980s era set a record for consecutive Test wins at 11, are no longer the swaggering stars of the world game. And Richards' cricket empire embraces more than a dozen English-speaking Caribbean countries. Everyone has an opinion on what to do.

"As chairman, I now know what a dartboard feels like," Richards said Friday. "Everyone keeps throwing things at that board." Richards does not sugarcoat the challenge he faces in restoring West Indies cricket to it former greatness.

Asked about the team's recent "lean years," he replied with a chuckle: "Lean. I think that's nice of you to put it that mildly." Still, the former West Indies captain took the job the moment it was offered.

"When the opportunity came along, I felt one should grab it with both hands, regardless of whether you're in that position as a dartboard or not. I felt I'm here to make contribution ..." Cricket is a way of life in the Caribbean.

"We all criticize when the team is not doing well at home. But it is amazing the enormous amount of pleasure which it gives to the Caribbean islands when the team does well.

"You can stay at my home town, in Antigua and Barbuda, and hear the car horns tooting in other islands when we have other success." Given time, Richards says he is certain that success will return. The West Indies Cricket Board will discuss that when directors meet this weekend in Trinidad to craft a leadership training program.

"We have seen how the lack of planning for the future has in some instances crippled West Indies cricket and we have to be pro-active," Roger Brathwaite, acting chief executive officer, said in a statement Friday.

Richards was in Canada at the behest of the Antigua and Barbuda Association of Toronto to help celebrate this weekend's 21st anniversary of his homeland's independence. He flew 29 hours from India, where the West Indies are currently on tour ? and losing.

Richard's cricket credentials are impeccable. Wisden, the bible of cricket, named him one of the five cricketers of the century, alongside Sir Donald Bradman, Sir Jack Hobbs, Sir Garfield Sobers and Shane Warne. He was world cricketer of the year in 1977. He scored 8,540 runs in 121 Test matches, notching 24 centuries and averaging 50.23 runs every time he batted.

His Test career stretched 121 Tests from 1974 to 1991. He retired a year later. Richards is one of only a few cricketers to have notched more than a hundred first-class centuries (he finished with 114) and remains in the record books for smashing a Test century off just 56 balls, against England.

In a sport where top bowlers hurl deliveries at 93 mph (150 kph) ? balls that bounce off the pitch before flying toward the batsman ? Richards never wore a protective helmet, opting instead for the famous maroon cap of the West Indies.

Would he shun a helmet today? "For sure," he says without missing a beat, and laughing. "I've always felt my head sometimes was a little bit too big for a helmet."

Asked about the great cricketers he has seen, Richards pointed to former Indian star Sunny Gavaskar, who scored more than a dozen centuries against Richards' crack West Indies teams "when a lot of people would rather go sit on the toilet then face them." In recent years, cricket has been besmirched by matchfixing scandals. Richards believes the International Cricket Council, the world governing body of the sport, has done what is needed to fight the corruption.

He says it was a side of the sport he had never witnessed as a player. "In the olden days, if someone ran away from battle, if he was fighting for his country, he would be charged with high treason and things like that," he added. "You may say in the sporting side of things, that some guys have been seriously guilty of misrepresentation of the game itself. I think the ICC have done what they've done at this point to try to weed it out as quickly as possible."

While the West Indies' winning aura has dissipated and the squad stands seventh in Test rankings, it remains a firm favorite in the cricket world.

"There's a style about the West Indies ... We still have a huge following," Richards said. "People are just waiting for us to turn the corner again."

* SOURCE: Associated Press.