A consummate hook for four off Botham

"Ian Botham needed two wickets to become the leading wicket-taker in Tests, so he said that he would bowl from one end and that I would bowl from the other. I couldn't believe it.

"'Thanks a bunch,' I said to him and told Gower on the way out that if the flak really did begin to fly he should take me off. 'No problem,' he reassured me.

"The problem was that when the flak did start to fly every other bowler did his best to look the other way.

"There was one shot that stands out. I did him in the air when he was trying to hit over long-off or long-on and I thought to myself that I had him. One-handed, he just swung across the line over the midwicket boundary and towards the prison.

"Both was hit for one six that shattered a glass of rum. The ball came back with a piece of glass in it. Looking back, the best thing I could have done was to cut my hand on it and get back into the dressing-room."

In the 1987 World Cup, in Karachi, Richards hit the Sri Lankans for an astonishing 181 from 125 balls, with 16 fours and seven sixes. He went from his hundred to 181 from 28 balls.

Asantha De Mel, the best Sri Lankan fast bowler of his generation, bore the brunt of the onslaught, ending with figures of 10-0-97-1.

"What can I say? It was such a fantastic innings; one of the best I have ever seen.

"I might have suffered more than the others but I had the job of bowling my last five overs at the end of the innings. My first five went for something like twenty-odd and my last five for more than 70.

"The thing I remember most about the innings was the sixes he hit. They weren't so much over the ropes as out of the ground.

"It was an incredible feat of power and timing."

Off-spinner Geoff Miller has the dubious distinction of having bowled to Richards during two of his finest innings - 291 at the Oval in 1976, his highest Test score, and 189 not out at Old Trafford eight years later, arguably the finest one-day innings ever played.

"Where do you start? The 291 was a bit of a blur to be honest. It was my first Test match and the West Indies were all-conquering at the time and within that Richards was their king.

"It was as dominating an innings as you would imagine and a baptism of fire for me.

Richards finally out at St John's, 291 runs later

"But the 189 not out was as complete a one-day innings as you could ever wish to see.

"To play an innings of that quality was one thing, but to play it in the circumstances in which the West Indies found themselves was something else.

"They were 102-7 shortly after he came in and 166-9 when Michael Holding came in at No11.

"Michael ended with 12 not out from a last-wicket partnership of 106, an indication of the complete control that Viv had over the bowling.

"When Viv had got to 40 or 50 he simply decided that it was his day and that the seamers would suffer. From a circumspect start he simply took them apart."

The Viv Richards story started in 1974 when, as a 22-year-old, he announced himself to Test cricket with an innings of 192 not out in Delhi, with sixes sixes and 20 fours.

It was only Richards' second Test but, as Indian wicketkeeper Farokh Engineer recalls, the signs of greatness were there for all to see.

"His reputation preceded him, but even then we would have been able to work it out for ourselves. It was his swagger, his demeanour at the crease that said it all.

"I loved the way he started out on the front foot and rocked back to hit the ball wherever he chose.

"It was an innings that nobody could ever forget. I feel proud to have been a part of it even though I was on the receiving end.

"He certainly was a player I would travel a long way to see bat. And an absolutely charming man to go with it."