The surgeon from Trinidad

RAMACHANDRA GUHA

IN December 1988, I spent a week in a Melbourne hotel. At breakfast every morning I saw a tall, dark, bespectacled man, eating alone, but interrupted at respectful intervals by stray Australians. "Excuse me Sir," they would ask, "are you Mr. Clive Lloyd?" It was a fair question, for he had a striking resemblance to the cricketer. He had the same shape, size and build, the same curly hair, even the same moustache dropping downwards. He looked the right age, too. And as it happened a West Indies cricket team, led by Vivian Richards, was touring Australia that winter. Was the great man here in disguise, to watch and critically comment on the performance of his successor? It did not seem so, for every morning the question would be answered, with a smile, and in the negative.

At my last breakfast in Melbourne I walked up to the man myself. If he was not Mr. Clive Lloyd, I asked, who was he? He answered that he was a surgeon from Trinidad, here in Australia to attend an international conference of his fellow scalpel-wielders. Perhaps that was the truth, or perhaps he was a travelling merchant with a wicked sense of humour, seeking to pose as one who did to the human body what his illustrious look-alike so regularly did to human bowlers.

The nearest I ever got to Clive Lloyd was 75 yards, during the Delhi Test of 1974. The West Indies were a nervous 123 for four when he walked in, all 75 inches of him, the slouch and the spectacles masking the most malevolent of intentions. No one, before or since, has hit the cricket ball harder than him. In and about December 1974 he was the most dangerous batsman in world cricket. In a matter of an hour he turned this game around. Venkatraghavan was pulled, and then hoicked for six over midwicket. Bedi was square cut, hard, but most brutal of all his shots was a backfoot drive off Prasanna. The ball traced a flaming path over the turf, the stalks of grass bowing their heads, crushed, as the missile sped from the giant's three pound mace to the boundary.

As I have related in a previous column, in this innings Lloyd was dismissed for 70 - the wicket the work of the umpire rather than the bowler - but by then he had encouraged Richards to march towards the 192 not out that established that young man as an international player and helped the West Indies take a two-nil lead in the series. They had won the first Test, in Bangalore, helped most fundamentally by a blistering 163 from Lloyd. The defining moment in the third Test (played in Calcutta) came early in Lloyd's second knock. Always an uncertain starter against spin, he missed a pitched-up googly from Chandrasekhar and lost his off-stump. His side then crumbled to an unexpected defeat.

With the aid of spin, India also won the fourth Test, played at Madras. The decider at Bombay was decided by the giant and his three pound mace. The West Indies batted first, and Lloyd came in at about 150 for two. When he had scored eight he hit a straight drive back at the bowler, Bishan Bedi. The Sardar bravely stuck out a hand, his left hand, but the ball knocked back a finger and sped away to the boundary. Bedi played no further part in the match. Lloyd went on to score 242, and to take his side to victory.

On the third evening of this Fifth Test, I sat with some others in my college common room, watching edited tapes of the second day's play, which took 24 hours to reach Delhi. Lloyd had been 64 not out overnight, with the West Indies commandingly placed at 309 for three. Pataudi took the second new ball at the start of play, and Eknath Solkar ran in as fast as he was to bowl. It was a leg stump half-volley, and Lloyd played his celebrated pick-up stroke, depositing the ball into the stands. The umpire signalled six, but the batsman put his palm to his mouth, unsuccessfully stifling a yawn. I can see that big mouth open now, open wide enough to swallow a cricket ball. To describe that shot, and its aftermath, I must call upon the favourite epithet of the MTV generation, and use it with capitals and exclamation marks and all:

"AWESOME!"

Later that year I saw more edited clips of a matchwinning 100 by Super-Cat, made in the World Cup finals of 1975. The square cuts were stuck with brutal power. The pulls were hit with an impatient ferocity. The drives were, well, awesome.

When Lloyd got to about 30, the Australian captain, Ian Chappell, replaced the wilting Jeff Thomson with the left-arm swing bowler Gary Gilmour. In the semi-final Gilmour had the princely figures of six for 14. Now, when Chappell asked him how he would like to bowl to Lloyd, the swing bowler answered: "With a helmet on."

I watched Lloyd "live" once, watched him canned on television several times, and heard his innings on the radio many more times still. I recall listening to a Test match commentary, circa 1977, when the superb Pakistani new ball pairing of Imran Khan and Sarfraz Nawaz had the West Indies down at 30 for three. Lloyd came in, and hit his second ball over square leg for six. A slip was taken out: then, when the next two balls went screaming to the point boundary, another slip disappeared into the outfield. This was one of the hundred or so occasions when he had transformed a cricket match with but three or four waves of his bat.

On Lloyd's last tour of Australia, in 1982, he was at the crease, with about 40 to his name, with the scores tied in the deciding Test match. A wicket fell, and Jeff Dujon came out to join him. Dujon now skilfully conspired to ensure that his captain scored the winning run. At least thrice in the over he played the ball far away from the wicket to allow a quick single, but stayed stuck to his crease, his stentorian tones instructing his partner to be likewise. Dujon's "Wait" could be clearly heard by me, listening into the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) from my hostel room in Calcutta. The over was thus safely played out, and Lloyd hit the winning boundary. Four big beaming men now rushed on to the field, to carry the victorious captain off it. They were Roberts, Holding, Garner and Croft, and they enjoyed this menial task as much as any of the 835 Test wickets that collectively accrue to their names.

Let me end with memories of Clive Lloyd the fielder. In his later days he slouched next to the wicket-keeper, rising only to pocket a edge flying fast off the bat. He was, as all who watched him know, a world class slip. As an outfielder he was out of this world. Unquestionably the best catch I have seen in any class of cricket was taken by Lloyd in New Delhi on December 14, 1974. G. R. Viswanath made to on-drive Gibbs, was beaten by a ball that dipped, and chipped it low to midwicket. Lloyd took three huge steps and then dived full length to come up with the ball. I am told that on his previous visit to India, in 1966, he was sharper still. In the Calcutta Test of that year, Chandu Borde played a ball on the on side, and set off for a single. The crowd heard Gary Sobers, the bowler, shout: "Clean up, Clive!" Borde had not seen the lean and hungry man hovering near midwicket. He was yards short of his ground when Lloyd's throw broke the stumps. Sobers was so certain of his man that he did not even stand over the wicket to collect the ball in case it missed.

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