Loud, proud and laid back: Brian Rose on the galvanising effect that Botham, Richards and Garner had at Somerset

"Viv's talent was obvious, right from the start. He had this superb physique, built like a middleweight boxer, with the sheen of the super-fit athlete"

Viv’s talent was obvious, right from the start. He had this superb physique, built like a middleweight boxer, with the sheen of the super-fit athlete. He carried himself like a man to be reckoned with, always looked you straight in the eye when he was talking to you, and on the pitch he had this fierce, penetrating stare, which you felt could almost turn bowlers to stone. He was a man completely confident in himself and his abilities.

For a young cricketer from a small island, Viv settled into life in Somerset remarkably well. A lot of that was down to Len Creed, who had spotted his talent in the Caribbean, brought him over and made him feel one of the family at his home in Bath, a kindness that Viv always remembered. When he moved to Taunton, his biggest danger was sharing the flat at the County Ground with Ian Botham and Dennis Breakwell, but he quickly learned how to handle them and the sort of stuff they got up to. 

The three of them had a great time but, whilst Viv liked a drink, he was more interested in the girls. You didn’t see many black men in Taunton in those days, certainly not black men as impressive physically as Viv, and he attracted girls like moths to a flame. 

As a batsman, he had all the shots and all the power, but what really set him apart – his ‘X factor’, if you like – was the way he could intimidate the opposition bowlers. Very often, he would target a particular bowler, especially if he thought that they had questioned his ability or said something disrespectful. In the run-up to the Old Trafford Test in 1980, Bob Willis had been quoted as saying that he’d got the measure of Richards and knew how to get him out.

Well, when Richards walked out to bat, he had only one thing on his mind, and that was to show Willis who was boss. Beefy had me fielding at mid-on for Willis, from where I was able to watch ball after ball sailing over my head and out to the leg-side boundary. Viv’s first 44 runs all came off Willis – 10 fours and two twos – and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a top-class fast bowler treated with such a mixture of hostility and contempt.

^{Joel Garner bowls against Essex in a John Player League match in 1983}

I don’t remember Viv ever giving less than his best. He was fiercely competitive, even in games of little consequence, and wasn’t shy of having a pop at someone in the dressing room if he felt they weren’t giving it their best shot. Once he had a go at me – for sending a message to ask what was happening in golf’s Open Championship when I was batting in a Sunday League game! 

Ian Botham was, and is, a very different type of character from Viv. His two strongest influences as a young cricketer were Tom Cartwright, on his bowling technique, and Brian Close, on his cricketing attitude. Tom had recognised his potential right from the start and set about moulding the raw talent into the great  bowler that Beefy became. He helped him with the way he held the ball, his wrist position, that great leap in his delivery stride, a terrific pull-back and getting side-on. But Closey was his real hero. He admired his strength, his bravery and, above all, his bull-at-a-gate style of captaincy. Closey, domineering, headstrong and entirely his own man, was exactly the type of cricketer and captain that Ian Botham wanted to become.

This didn’t make him easy to captain. He was the ultimate competitor, but he sometimes tried too hard to make things happen. If things weren’t going well for him with the ball, he would tend to start experimenting, often quite early on. With the bat he was always looking to attack, but he didn’t quite have Richards’ tenacity, which meant that he lacked consistency. My attitude was, within reason, to give him his head. If he came off, as he often did, then great; if he didn’t, well I had other bowlers to call upon, and our batting strength was such that we could usually afford the odd failure from our star allrounder.

Beefy could be a nightmare in the dressing room, playing practical jokes which usually involved somebody getting a soaking, although one of his favourite tricks was to hide Peter Roebuck’s bat, just as Pete had to go out to bat. He was loud, boisterous and pretty free with his distinctly right-wing political opinions, and he loved to wind up the university boys, who were all, to a greater or lesser extent, left of centre in their politics.

'The committee would sometimes get complaints from members about Ian’s behaviour, and the Taunton chief of police had my number if things got out of hand'

None of this bothered me particularly. I just let him get on with it. But on the field was a different matter. He wasn’t at all a difficult cricketer to captain until he got bored, when he would start fooling around in the slips, or sometimes even when he was bowling. He would want to set strange fields or would bowl too many bouncers, and that could be frustrating. On the other hand, it was that element of unpredictability which got him so many wickets. He was always in the batsman’s face, always trying something different. They say he got more wickets than anyone else with bad balls, but there was a lot of judgement about that as well as a fair amount of luck. It was almost as if he forced the wickets to come, through sheer strength of character.

He and I got on pretty well, most of the time. I kept well away from all the post-match action, which wasn’t difficult, as I was living in Weston and would go home every evening if we were playing in Taunton. I did have some idea of what he was getting up to, as the committee would sometimes get complaints from local members, and the Taunton chief of police had my telephone number if things got out of hand. He rang me only a couple of times, once when they were holding Beefy in the police station after he’d got involved in some sort of bust-up with the usual sort of drunken yobs who had no doubt done their best to provoke him. I said, “Hold him there for a couple of hours to let him cool off, and he’ll be fine,” and that was the end of it.

If Viv was proud and Beefy was loud, then Joel Garner was about the most laid-back fast bowler you could ever meet. Many times, when I arrived at the County Ground for a day’s cricket, I would find my great international fast bowler stretched out on the physio’s bench, fast asleep. The chances are that he’d been up to Birmingham or even Manchester the evening before for a night out with his West Indian mates from his Littleborough days. 

Most of the time, Joel bowled well within himself, concentrating on line and length, which was generally just short of a length on off stump, with the yorker and an occasional bouncer as variations. It may seem an odd comparison to make, but in some ways he reminded me of Tom Cartwright, not just for his remorseless accuracy but also because, like Tom, he hated giving runs away.

^{Left; Brian Rose catches up on the news. Right; A young Botham tears in to bowl}

The only disagreements I ever had with him on the field were over whether or not to post a third slip, with me saying he ought to have one and he – remarkably for a fast bowler – disagreeing. His economical instincts also meant that I usually gave him a third man, set very fine, for the one that was nicked through or over the slips. Joel’s meanness when it came to giving away runs was the perfect counterbalance to Beefy’s more attacking, and sometimes more expensive, approach. I always reckoned that, in one-day cricket, Joel’s accuracy would cost the opposition maybe five or six overs.

Joel was as popular as he was competitive, and he gelled perfectly with the rest of the team, be they local boys, Oxbridge intellectuals or international superstars. In Hallam Moseley and Viv, he found kindred Caribbean spirits, not that any of us could understand a word they were saying when they got their heads together in a huddle! They also shared a huge ghetto-blaster, which would pump out Bob Marley at full volume whenever they had the chance.

Giants don’t come much gentler, nor fast bowlers much nicer than Joel Garner, but just occasionally he would lose his rag and then, as Vic Marks used to say, watch out! One occasion was against Northants, when we were expecting a declaration to set up a finish, and they batted on and on. I could see that Joel was getting angry, so called him up to give them the hurry-up. Nick Cook was batting and, as he saw Joel come charging in at full pace, he looked absolutely terrified – and with good reason. An over later, they declared!

People often ask me how I managed to captain so successfully with all of those big egos and strong characters in the dressing room. “How could you control that lot?” they say. Well, the answer is that, off the field, I didn’t try to control them. What they got up to wasn’t my concern unless it started affecting their cricket and invariably it didn’t. But on the field was a different matter. I like to think that I freed them to concentrate on what they did best, and they did it brilliantly.

Whatever happened later on, no captain could have asked for more in terms of both attitude and performance than I got from Smokey, Beefy and Big Bird. They were at the heart of our success.

This article was published in the September 2019 edition of The Cricketer - the home of the best cricket analysis and commentary, covering the international, county, women's and amateur game

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