The Master Blaster — arguably the most intimidating batsman in cricket history. His sledging comeback to Greg Thomas is cricket folklore.
36 incidents documented
New Zealand vs South Africa
2004-03-12
New Zealand opener Mark Richardson celebrated his Test centuries with a pre-planned robotic dance routine that became one of cricket's most endearing traditions.
West Indies vs Australia
1995-05-03
On May 3, 1995, Australia beat the West Indies by an innings and 53 runs at Sabina Park to take the four-Test series 2-1 — and end West Indian dominance of Test cricket after 15 years and 29 unbeaten series. Steve Waugh's 200 and a 231 stand with twin Mark anchored the win.
West Indies vs Australia
28 April 1995
Curtly Ambrose got in Steve Waugh's face after being told to go back to his mark. Richie Richardson had to pull Ambrose away. Ambrose then bowled a devastating spell.
Australia vs West Indies
1993-01-30
On January 30, 1993, Curtly Ambrose produced one of the great fast-bowling spells of the modern era — 7 for 1 in 32 balls — to demolish Australia from 85 for 2 to 119 all out in the Perth Test. He finished with 7 for 25; West Indies won by an innings and 25 runs to seal the Frank Worrell Trophy 2-1.
Australia vs West Indies
1993-01-05
On January 5, 1993, a 23-year-old Brian Lara made his maiden Test hundred at the SCG — and turned it into 277 off 372 balls before being run out. The innings, his fifth Test, announced the arrival of the most exciting batter of the 1990s.
Australia vs West Indies
1993-01-26
On January 26, 1993, West Indies beat Australia by one run at Adelaide — the narrowest victory by runs in Test history. Australia, chasing 186, were 102 for 8 when Tim May (42 not out) and Craig McDermott (18) added 40 for the ninth wicket and then 42 for the tenth before McDermott was given out caught behind off a Courtney Walsh bouncer with two runs needed.
West Indies vs England
18 November 1993
Curtly Ambrose refused to remove his white wristbands when asked by the umpire, leading to a standoff that required captain Richie Richardson's intervention.
West Indies vs South Africa
1992-04-18
On April 18-23, 1992, South Africa played their first Test match in 22 years — against the West Indies in Bridgetown. They lost by 52 runs after collapsing from 122/2 to 148 all out chasing 201. Curtly Ambrose took 6/34 in the second innings; Barbadian fans largely boycotted the game in protest at Anderson Cummins' omission.
England vs South Africa
22 March 1992
A farcical rain rule calculation left South Africa needing 22 runs off 1 ball in the World Cup semi-final, robbing them of a realistic chance of reaching the final.
Australia vs Various
28 December 1991
Merv Hughes was legendary for his creative and often hilarious sledging, engaging in memorable verbal battles with Javed Miandad, Viv Richards, and many others.
England, West Indies
1988-06-04
On a damp Old Trafford pitch in 1988, Malcolm Marshall produced what many of his peers consider his masterpiece — 7 for 22 in 18.3 overs to bowl England out for 93.
England, West Indies
1986-04-15
Eighteen months after the 1984 Blackwash, West Indies repeated the 5-0 in the Caribbean, this time with the debutant Patrick Patterson making the Sabina Park pitch genuinely terrifying for England's batsmen.
England vs West Indies
1986-07-03
After Greg Thomas told Viv Richards he'd missed the ball, Richards smashed the next delivery out of the ground and told Thomas to go find it.
West Indies
1985-01-20
Clive Lloyd retired from international cricket and the West Indies captaincy at the end of the 1984-85 Australian tour, ending an 11-year reign that included two World Cup finals, the Blackwash, and the most successful captaincy in cricket history at the time.
West Indies
1985-02-15
Viv Richards inherited the West Indies captaincy from Clive Lloyd in 1985 and led the side through a six-year peak in which he never lost a Test series — a captaincy distinction unique in modern cricket history.
England, West Indies
1984-08-13
Clive Lloyd's West Indies became the first touring side to win every Test of a five-match series in England, sweeping the home team 5-0 in a result that was instantly nicknamed the 'Blackwash'.
England, West Indies
1984-07-12
With his left hand encased in a plaster cast after a double fracture, Malcolm Marshall came out to bat one-handed at Headingley, helped Larry Gomes to a century, then took 7/53 to win the Test.
India, West Indies
1983-06-25
Bowled out for 183 against the two-time defending champions, India dismissed West Indies for 140 — Mohinder Amarnath and Madan Lal taking three wickets each — to win the 1983 World Cup and change Indian sport forever.
India, West Indies
1983-06-25
Madan Lal's 3 for 31 — including the wicket of Viv Richards — and Mohinder Amarnath's 3 for 12 in seven overs ripped through the West Indies in the 1983 World Cup final and made an unlikely 183 enough to win the trophy.
West Indies vs England
23 June 1979
Vivian Richards' 138 not out off 157 balls and Collis King's 86 from 66 balls in a 139-run fifth-wicket partnership took West Indies to 286/9 in the 1979 Prudential World Cup final at Lord's. England, in reply, were dismissed for 194 — the chase undone by the slow-batting opening pair of Geoffrey Boycott (57 from 105 balls) and Mike Brearley (64 from 130). West Indies retained the World Cup with a 92-run victory.
Multiple (WSC vs Establishment Cricket)
24 November 1977
Media mogul Kerry Packer signed 51 of the world's best cricketers to a rival competition after being denied TV broadcast rights, fundamentally transforming professional cricket.
West Indies (vs Australia, India, England)
January-December 1976
Vivian Richards scored 1,710 runs in eleven Tests in 1976 at an average of 90.00, with seven centuries — a record that stood for thirty years until Mohammad Yousuf's 1,788 in 2006. The aggregate included 556 in Australia, 384 in the Caribbean against India, and 829 against England in four Tests, capped by 291 at the Oval. Richards missed the Lord's Test of the English summer with glandular fever; the seven centuries broke Garry Sobers' previous record of six in a calendar year.
England vs West Indies
3 June 1976
Tony Greig infamously said he intended to make the West Indies 'grovel,' a comment with racial undertones that provoked an incredible West Indian response.
West Indies vs Australia
21 June 1975
The first Cricket World Cup — the Prudential World Cup of 1975 — culminated in a 60-overs-a-side final at Lord's on 21 June, in which West Indies beat Australia by 17 runs. Clive Lloyd's 102 from 85 balls anchored West Indies' 291/8; Vivian Richards ran out three Australian batters, including the Chappell brothers; Australia were dismissed for 274 in 58.4 overs. The match finished after 8.43 pm under summer twilight and crowned West Indies as the inaugural one-day champions.
England vs Australia
1956-07-31
On 31 July 1956 at Old Trafford, Jim Laker took 10 for 53 in Australia's second innings to finish with 19 for 90 in the match — figures that stand alone in Test history. His 9 for 37 in the first innings was followed by all ten in the second. England won by an innings and 170 runs. Laker's match analysis remains the best in any first-class match anywhere; only Anil Kumble has since matched the ten-wicket innings.
Australia v England
1936-12-04
Don Bradman's first series as Australia's captain, in 1936-37 against Gubby Allen's England, began with two heavy defeats and a press chorus calling for his replacement. Bradman responded with 270 at the MCG, 212 at Adelaide and 169 at the MCG again, and Australia won the next three Tests to take the Ashes 3-2 — the only time in Test history a side has lost the first two Tests of a five-Test series and recovered to win it. The captaincy that English critics had questioned was suddenly the captaincy of a man who would lead Australia for the next 12 years.
Nottinghamshire and English county cricket
1928-09-30
Across the 1927 and 1928 county seasons the 23-year-old Notts miner Harold Larwood took 100, 138 and then 138 wickets — establishing himself as the fastest bowler in England and securing his place in the 1928-29 Ashes side that would, four years later, take its leg-theory plans to Australia.
Australia v England
1925-01-01
On a rain-affected New Year's Day at the MCG in 1925, Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe walked out to open and put on 283 — at the time the highest opening stand in Ashes Test history and an innings that announced one of the great opening partnerships of all cricket. England lost the match but the partnership had begun in earnest.
Sussex and England
1923-09-15
Through 1922 and 1923, on the advice of his Sussex captain Arthur Gilligan, the 28-year-old off-spinner Maurice Tate switched to fast-medium swing bowling. The change produced 219 wickets in 1923, his Test debut against South Africa at Edgbaston in 1924, and the bowling career that became the model for the English fast-medium swing tradition.
Australia, England
1905-07-15
Albert 'Tibby' Cotter, a stocky 21-year-old fast bowler from Sydney, made his Test debut against England in 1903-04 but became famous on the 1905 Ashes tour. He bowled bouncers as a tactic when most Edwardian fast bowlers thought them ungentlemanly, set packed slip-cordons, and broke stumps. He died in October 1917 in a mounted charge at Beersheba — the only Australian Test cricketer killed in the Great War.
Australia v England
1898-01-01
On 1-3 January 1898, the 20-year-old Adelaide left-hander Clem Hill came in at 6 for 58 and made 188 — his maiden Test century, and still the highest Ashes Test score by a player under 21. Australia recovered to 520 and won by an innings. The innings established Hill as the central figure of Australian batting between Trumper and Bradman; he would average 39 across 49 Tests until 1912.
England v Australia
1896-07-16
In the same Old Trafford Test that produced Ranjitsinhji's debut 154*, England's fast bowler Tom Richardson took 7 for 168 and 6 for 76 — match figures of 13 for 244 from 110 overs of fast bowling. He bowled unchanged for three hours on the final afternoon as Australia scrabbled to 125 for 7 chasing 125 to win. Australia held on by three wickets. Richardson's spell is one of the great lost-cause performances in Test history.
Surrey, England
1895-09-01
In the summer of 1895 — the same season as W.G. Grace's 'Indian Summer' — Surrey's Tom Richardson took 290 first-class wickets at 14.37, the largest haul ever recorded by a fast bowler in a single English season. Of those 290 wickets, 237 came in county matches and 176 of all dismissals were bowled. Across the four consecutive seasons 1894-97 he took 1,005 first-class wickets, a workload no fast bowler before or since has matched.
Eight first-class counties
1890-05-12
On 10 December 1889, secretaries of eight first-class counties met at Lord's and agreed to settle the championship by wins and losses, ignoring drawn games. The 1890 season that followed is the one Wisden and the counties themselves recognise as the first official County Championship. Surrey, captained by John Shuter and powered by George Lohmann and Bobby Abel, won nine of fourteen matches and were declared the inaugural champions — the start of the unbroken competition that still runs today.
Australia
1888-09-30
Charles Thomas Biass Turner, nicknamed 'The Terror', was the outstanding bowler of the late 1880s. In the wet English summer of 1888 he took 283 first-class wickets at 11.27 — a tally only ever bettered by Tom Richardson in 1895 and Tich Freeman in 1928 and 1933. The previous Australian summer he had become the only bowler ever to take 100 first-class wickets in a single Australian season. He reached 50 Test wickets in only six matches (still the record) and was the second bowler in history to 100 Test wickets, behind Johnny Briggs by three days in 1895.
Australia vs England
1879-01-02
On 2 January 1879 Fred Spofforth took the first hat-trick in Test cricket — dismissing Vernon Royle bowled, Francis MacKinnon bowled (first ball of his Test career) and Tom Emmett caught — at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. England were 26 for some when the hat-trick fell. Spofforth went on to take 13 for 110 in the match, and Australia won by 10 wickets.