Any cricket lovers on here?

No cricket being played, but BBC2 are showing some.
6.45PM tonight. England v West Indies. 2nd Test 1984 at Lord's.
Gordon Grenidge scoring 214 in an afternoon. One of the most brutal innings ever. 20/20 stuff long before that was invented. Proper Test Match cricket.
Best of all, Richie Benaud will be commentating.
6.45PM tonight. England v West Indies. 2nd Test 1984 at Lord's.
Gordon Grenidge scoring 214 in an afternoon. One of the most brutal innings ever. 20/20 stuff long before that was invented. Proper Test Match cricket.
Best of all, Richie Benaud will be commentating.
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Sky has a cricket channel that is showing classic test matches, funnily enough England always win, not much footage of the Windies in the 70s and 80s.
Have you seen Fire in Babylon?
(We don't have Sky)
Edit...I've just Googled that. Seen it? I lived through it. I remember it all very well. Changed Test cricket forever as a response to Lillee and Thomson. Some fearsome bowling in those days.
I remember Dennis Amiss going out to bat in a baseball helmet for protection and getting all sorts of flack. Everyone wears those nowadays.
And to think helmets weren't even considered and no restrictions on the number of bouncers!
Somerset also played my local football team at the time, with Botham and Viv playing for them. They were both still playing test cricket at the time.
Here's an old photo of me saving a diving header from Both.
The autograph queue for Joel was the stuff of legends and he'd sign all of them.
I also remember seeing Greg Thomas and one of the West Indian quicks (possibly Joel Garner) running in from more or less the boundary ropes. When I say seeing, it was just a windmill of arms followed by the keeper, who was about two thirds of the way back to the boundary, returning the ball a second later.
First 5 balls went straight through to Engineer. Yorks fans were jeering. Lancs captain David Lloyd had a word with Croft before the final ball. More jeers.
Croft ran in. Boycott never saw it. Stumps all over the place. Uproar. Brilliant.
We still hate Boycott.
Apologies for going off topic but...
I grew up in Nottingham in the 70's and 80's when Nottingham forest were 'the greatest football team'.
Anyway, we used to kick a football about on our local park most evenings and we are talking jumpers for goalposts stuff with a total mishmash of ages and abilities. This was not a collective of skilled footballers, we were literally just the local kids.
On many, many occasions, we would be joined by anything between 1 and 5 Forest players with zero pomp or ceremony, including European cup winners and England players. These were simply talented blokes with time on their hands and a love of their sport. No photos were ever taken though.
He was a refreshing breath of honesty about the English team and rarely wrong with his views. He also had a great dynamic with Aggers.
Aggers wind-up over the 'disallowed' Rest of the World tests, meaning that Boycott's 100th first class century wouldn't have been at Headingley was a classic.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/52944158
TMS is great company when I'm in the car all day during cricket season.
The 1970’s Windies team was truly something to behold, you had one of the greatest opening duos ever in Greenidge and Haynes. Once you got past them you had the best batsman I’ve ever seen in Viv Richards, with Richie Richardson and Clive Lloyd lying in wait
Once you got through the batting order there was the small matter of Holding, Marshall, Roberts, Garner trying to remove your head from your shoulders with probably the most hostile fast bowling the cricket world has ever seen
Opinions vary of course but I think you can make a very strong argument that that era of West Indian cricket being the best team ever!
I'm not sure who would come out top but what a test match it would be to watch
Was lucky enough to play pro way back when, and though I just missed it (thank god) and faced Marshall when he was a swing bowler (and literally unhittable on his day). The word on the county circuit for the worst bowler to face - Sylvester Clarke. A barrel chested psycho on the pitch who used to rough up absolutely everyone. Though actually the most worried ever was fielding at point to Robin Smith. Liable to crack off the bat at lightning zip and if the crowd / hoardings on the other side of the pitch were unkind you could end up eating the ball.
The two fastest bowlers I faced were Duncan Spencer (famously threw his bouncer which was 3 yards quicker than regular deliveries, and they were quick enough) and Adrianus van Troost. Facing van Troost in fading light was the only time I've ever been genuinely worried for my safety playing sport.
Bit of a surprise.
I always thought that Wayne Daniels was very quick.