Today, former West Indies batsman Viv Richards is celebrating his 71st birthday. Richards was born on March 7, 1952 in Antigua. He is one of the few players of his era who is still popular all over the world. There are many such cricketers, including India’s great batsman Sachin Tendulkar, who consider Richards as their role model. Richards made his Test debut in the year 1974 while he made his ODI debut in 1975. He had managed to dominate the cricket world for 17 years. He played 308 international matches for the West Indies team and won the hearts of people with his breathtaking batting.
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Played in both cricket & football world cups
Viv Richards played 121 Tests, scoring 8540 runs at an average of 50.24 and a mindboggling strike rate of 86.07 in the 1970-80s era . At the same time, Richards played 187 ODIs, in which he scored 6721 runs at an average of 47 and a strike rate of 90.2. He played four World Cups for the West Indies. However, very few people know that apart from cricket, Richards has also played in the Football World Cup. He played a football match for the Antigua team in the 1974 Football World Cup qualifiers. At that time he was only 20 years old. Richards also played football for English clubs Bath FC and Minehead Association FC.
Since the advent of T20 cricket, batsmen score fast runs and turn the tide of the match. But Richards used to do this style of batting from the beginning of his career. He used to wreak havoc on the bowlers. He scored a century in just 56 balls in the Test against England in the year 1986 . It was the fastest century in Tests at that time. This record of Richards’s most hard hitting century in Test cricket stood for 30, which was broken by New Zealand batsman Brendon McCullum in the year 2016. McCullum made this record by scoring a century in 54 balls against Australia.
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In the below video , watch Vivian Richards unleashing a wide array of strokes vs the great Richard Hadlee in a New Zealand vs West Indies test match in 1987