ISSUE IV
MARCH 2025
MARCH 2025
Accidental Theorist: VIV Richards
What would cricketer Viv Richards’ theory of international affairs look like?
By Sean Jacobs
In July 1980, Tariq Ali interviewed CLR James about contemporary politics. James stipulated one condition for the interview: “It must end as the Second Test Match began, as I don’t want to miss a single minute of cricket.” After discussing topics like imperialism, capitalism, racism, the Caribbean, and James’s admiration for Fidel Castro, Ali posed a cricket question: “Who would you regard as the most attractive cricketer today?” James responded without hesitation: Viv Richards. “The way he plays is something new.” For James, Richards surpassed even George Headley and Garfield Sobers, two of the Caribbean's greatest cricketers. “This boy Richards is a marvel. His batting is something we haven’t seen before. He is an extraordinary batsman altogether. The way they drop the ball on the off-stump or just outside, and he keeps hitting it through the on-side, past the fielders, to the boundary. The precision of the shot is such that he could be playing billiards. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
James, a historian from Trinidad, knew a thing or two about cricket. He wrote the seminal BEYOND THE BOUNDARY, which is still considered the best book on the relationship between cricket, politics, and society. James also played a key role in decolonizing West Indian cricket. In the late 1950s, as a newspaper editor, he used his platform to promote the West Indian cricket team as a symbol of pan-Caribbean identity. He advocated for the team, until then captained by descendants of the white planter class dating back to slavery, to be led by a Black captain for an entire Test series.
Richards joined the West Indies cricket team in 1974. By then, Clive Lloyd from Walter Rodney’s Guyana was captain. Richards was from Antigua, a small island about which Jamaica Kincaid wrote “A Small Place.” Between 1980 and 1995, the West Indies remained undefeated in 29 test series. No other team has achieved that since. The team was immortalized by the documentary film “Fire in Babylon.” Richards became captain in 1984. He is the only West Indies captain to have never lost a test series.
Richards batted without a helmet, embodying cheek and flamboyance in his style—qualities he consistently backed up with his performance. By the end of his career, he was widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen of all time, particularly in one-day internationals. In 2000, “Wisden” cricket magazine named him one of its five “Cricketers of the Century,” alongside Don Bradman, Gary Sobers, Jack Hobbs, and Shane Warne. Imran Khan, who led Pakistan to its only World Cup title, wrote in 1993: “He was the only genius of my time.”
His politics didn’t stop at the boundary line. Richards, 73 years old now, fused his cricketing brilliance with a bold display of pan-Africanist ideals. He wore a red, yellow, and green sweatband—an expression of his Rastafarian faith—and openly supported African liberation movements. As one Caribbean journalist said, “It has to be refreshing to black people to see the captain of a renowned team unappeasingly proud of his culture.” When he met Nelson Mandela in the early 2000s, the retired South African president and freedom fighter thanked him for refusing to accept white South African cricket’s blood money during the early 1980s, when leading players from the West Indies, England, Sri Lanka, and Australia broke the international sports boycott against apartheid. Richards also spoke out against colorism in the West Indies. In response to criticism from administrators and media over his assertiveness, he remarked: “They might be searching for a blue-eyed blond boy whose hair shakes in place.” He was most certainly not that.
Richards has lived in Antigua since retiring from first-class cricket. He remains popular and supports center-left political parties but has ruled out a run for office.
A Richards-inspired theory of international affairs would likely call for reforming global institutions—the UN, World Bank, and WTO—to ensure equitable representation, particularly for the Global South. In such a vision, the Global South would not just have a seat at the table but might even take the lead. Given his mutual admiration for C.L.R. James, it’s likely that the ideals of Pan-Africanism, the Bandung Conference, and the Non-Aligned Movement would be key sources of inspiration.
For Richards, the tactical shifts he introduced to West Indian cricket—and the pressure he helped mount on administrators to represent player interests—were part of a larger project: the decolonization of the game. These changes directly challenged cricket’s colonial power center in Britain, which had long protected apartheid-era South Africa. Even after South Africa’s official ban, white South African cricketers continued to find places in England’s first eleven. In 2021, Tariq Ali wrote with exasperation: “County cricket welcomes white Rhodesians and South Africans with open arms, while tormenting British Asians and Blacks.”
That said, Richards has largely remained silent on the rise of Indian cricket and the transformation of the global game driven from the subcontinent.
Still today, Richards has not held back on global politics, voicing concern over U.S. leadership under Donald Trump, rising ethno-nationalism, and autocratic regimes. In a 2022 interview with “The Telegraph” from India, Richards criticized the U.S. for its hypocrisy, citing its reluctance to confront Saudi Arabia over the Yemen war and arms deals. “The world needs to be fairer for us to survive,” he said. On the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Richards expressed outrage: “How could that happen in this century? The man entered his own consulate and left in a body bag.” His message: the powerful must be held accountable.
sean jacobs is professor and director of the graduate program of international affairs at the new school.