Personality and Playing Style
Richards was a very powerful right-handed batsman with an extremely attacking style, besides being an excellent fielder, and a handy off-spin bowler. He is often regarded as the most devastating batsman that ever played the game by cricketers, journalists, fans and others alike, and played his entire career without a helmet, across the 17 years from 1974 till 1991.
Several prominent personalities including former cricketer and legendary fast bowler and all-rounder Imran Khan and noted writer John Birmingham are of the opinion that Richards was the best ever batsman against genuine fast bowling. Many other former players of the game rate him extremely high overall as a batsman. For Barry Richards, Ravi Shastri and Neil Fairbrother, he remains the best batsman they ever witnessed. Wasim Akram rates Richards the greatest batsman he ever bowled to, ahead of Sunil Gavaskar and Martin Crowe. Martin Crowe, arguably the greatest batsman to have ever emerged from New Zealand, rates Viv Richards as the best batsman he played against along with Greg Chappell. Richards was also Crowe's cricketing idol along with Donald Bradman, Garfield Sobers and Greg Chappell.
The ICC came out with their rankings for the best batsmen and bowlers in the history of the game for both the longer and shorter versions. The ratings for Test Cricket had Vivian Richards ranked at 6 equal after Sir Donald Bradman, Sir Len Hutton, Sir Jack Hobbs, Ricky Ponting and Peter May. The ODI ratings again had Richards comfortably perched at 1 followed by Zaheer Abbas and Greg Chappell. These rankings were based on the level achieved by the batsmen at their respective peaks.
In 2004, in a poll by ESPN, participated in by 15 of the leading names in cricketing history, Richards was voted the third greatest ever player after Bradman and Sobers, and the second greatest ever batsman after Bradman. He was also voted the greatest cricketer since 1970 by another poll ahead of Ian Botham and Shane Warne. That poll saw both Botham and Warne vote for Richards, and in the opinions of both, Richards is the greatest batsman they ever saw. In 2006, in a study done by a team of ESPN's Cricinfo magazine, Richards was again chosen the greatest ODI Batsman ever. Former cricketer Derek Pringle also rates Richards to be the best batsman ever in the history of Limited Overs Cricket.
His fearless and aggressive style of play, and relaxed but determined demeanor made him a great crowd favourite and an intimidating prospect for opposition bowlers all over the world. The word "swagger" is frequently used to describe his batting style. His batting often completely dominated opposing bowlers. He had the ability to drive good-length balls from outside off-stump through midwicket, his trademark shot, and was one of the great exponents of the hook shot.
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