Soon after Kapil Dev had led India to a historic victory in the 1983 Prudential World Cup, the West Indies cricket team embarked on a tour of India for a series which involved six Tests, five ODI matches and some first class matches. One of those first class matches, between the West Indies and South Zone, was played at the Lal Bahadur stadium in Hyderabad from 8th October to 10th October.
Clive Lloyd was leading the visiting team and the former fast bowler Sir Wesley Hall was the manager. The present generation may not know much about this great fast bowler so here is a brief background about Wesley Hall. In the 1960s he was rated as the fastest bowler in the world. With fellow paceman Charlie Griffith he formed one of the most feared opening bowling attacks in international cricket at that time.
Wesley Hall, legendary fast bowler
A tall and powerfully built man, Hall was a genuine fast bowler and despite his extremely long run up, was renowned for his ability to bowl long spells. In the first ever tied Test match in Brisbane in 1960, Hall captured five wickets for 63 runs in Australia’s second innings and also bowled the nail biting last over of the match which ended in a tie.
Coming back to 1983, this correspondent and a colleague named P.V. Vaidyanathan were assigned to cover the match between the West Indies and South zone.
On the evening of the first day, after we had finished our reports, I got a call from the manager of Banjara Hotel (now Taj Banjara). In those days the Banjara Hotel was where all the VIPs stayed when visiting Hyderabad. The hotel manager invited us to have dinner at his hotel with the West Indies team.
I couldn’t believe my luck
My colleague and I went to the hotel on my two-wheeler and met the manager first. He ushered us into the dining hall which was empty. But one by one the players began to trickle in. Wesley Hall came in first. The hotel manager introduced me to Hall and for a few minutes I was speechless. Hall had been one of my heroes when I was in school.
Hall turned out to be a jovial and friendly person to talk to. He bragged to me that he could still bowl very fast even though he was a grey haired 45-year-old man by then. “Young man, I can still rearrange the parting of your hair with a bouncer,” he told me.
Hall also told me that his son was a jockey. “We like speed in our family,” he explained with a smile. He revealed that he had bought a good saddle for his son from Kanpur where he found top quality leather goods easily available at low cost.
Meeting the elite names of cricket
One by one all the famous names of the West Indies team walked into the room. Viv Richards was in a great mood because he had scored a century that day against the South Zone attack which had Hyderabad’s Shivlal Yadav and Narsimha Rao. I conveyed my congratulations to Viv and he smiled and replied: “Thank you.”
Gordon Greenidge walked in with Desmond Haynes as if they were walking in to open the innings. They were then considered to be the world’s best opening batsmen. By the time they left cricket, they had opened for West Indies 148 times and amassed 6482 runs in their first wicket partnerships. They were one of the all time great opening combinations.
Roger Harper, Gus Logie, Jeff Dujon, Malcolm Marshall, Andy Roberts, Wayne Daniel, Winston Davis, Larry Gomes and other stars, all turned up one by one. But I did not see Michael Holding. He was not playing in the Hyderabad match and he did not come to the dining room for some reason.
Clive Lloyd, the surprise package
But the surprise package was Clive Lloyd. When he walked into the room, he greeted Hall with a big smile but when his eyes fell on my colleague and me, his mood changed immediately. He realised that we were journalists and he didn’t want to speak. He just clammed up. Even with Hall, his manner changed because the two of us outsiders were present. He became quiet and taciturn. For the rest of the evening he hardly spoke even to his manager Wesley Hall.
I noticed that Malcom Marshall had heaped a lot of biryani on his plate. So I asked him if he liked biryani. He replied: “Back home in Barbados, rice with fish and chicken are our staple diet. But this is a delicious dish.”
I also used the opportunity to have a long chat with off spinner Roger Harper who was playing his first series and that interview was published later in The Sportstar magazine.
Highlights of the series
The tour became famous for several reasons. Yashpal Sharma retired after this series. Andy Roberts too did not play Test cricket thereafter. Richie Richardson, who later became captain of the West Indies, made his debut on this tour. Roger Harper also made his debut. Srinagar became a host city for the first time. Sunil Gavaskar made his career best 236 not out in the last Test match in Chennai. As far as I was concerned it was a memorable evening that I spent with the super stars of cricket and the experience will never be erased from my mind.
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