Sir Gordon, the Southampton jewel

While savouring the picturesque Hampshire Bowl on television during the India v New Zealand ICC World Test Championship final one also thought about Hampshire cricket More specifically the West Indian stars who wore the countyrsquos colours in this ordermdashRoy Marshall Gordon Greenidge Andy Roberts and Malcolm MarshallGreenidge who served West Indies cricket from 1974 to 1991 attained knighthood in his native Barbados a few days agoApart from his 12692 international runs Greenidge in the opinion of several pundits was the hardest hitter of a cricket ball His strength to hit the ball far can probably be traced to the late 1960s during his early days with HampshireIn his autobiography The Man in the Middle he revealed that he went to live with his UKsettled mother and talked about the difficult times he endured at school in ReadingHe faced rampant racism in school and it took an incident for things to improve when he got into the Hampshire setup in 1968 as a member of the ground staff A few youngsters were marking the crease in preparation for the following dayrsquos county game when they noticed Greenidge in their midst They decided to cover him with whitewash When they tried to ldquopaintrdquo his private parts he managed to get free and took hold of a spade which was lying around The threat of using it on them was a serious one so they backed off and never again was Greenidge the ldquobutt of racial jokesrdquoRuns were hard to come by in Hampshire Second XI colours and his poor fielding added to his woes The fear of not getting another contract was inescapable and Greenidge decided to take his cricket more seriously He trained with weights and ran many a mile on the streets of Southampton to get fitter A policeman once discovered him running late into the night and questioned him He was only convinced that Greenidge was on the streets for the right reasons when the local police station confirmed that there were no robberies reported that night Greenidge went on to perform so well for Hampshire that he could play for England but he chose the West Indies and figured in his first Shell Shield season for Barbados in 197273 while continuing to grace Hampshire turf The righthanded opener seemed to relish English conditions and on his first Test tour to England in 1976 he plundered 592 runs at 6578Greenidge also enjoys an eventful cricketing connection with India scoring hundreds in the opening Tests of two of his three Test tours here In fact he nearly got a century in both innings of his debut Testmdash93 and 107 in 197475mdashand 194 at Kanpur in 1983Greenidgersquos poor performances in the 197576 series Down Under caused the selectors to drop him for West Indiesrsquo home rubber against India in 197576 Greenidge was part of World Series Cricket when they toured India in 197879 thus he could only resume his Test battles with India against Kapil Devrsquos tourists in 1983In the fifth and final Test at Antigua Greenidge ended Day Two with seven not out while partner Desmond Haynes was on 14 That evening he received the news that his twoandahalfyearold daughter Ria was in coma with a kidney ailment He endured a sleepless night and resumed batting the following day to score 154 He left the field and headed to Barbados to be with his daughter Ria passed away two days laterI reproduce here a part of my April 2013 story on that heroic innings played under intense personal pressure ldquoIn a rare interview Greenidge spoke to this writer about his darkest offfield phase lsquoRia was an old soul She could carry out a conversation with grownups and you wouldnrsquot believe a twoandahalfyearold girl could do thatrsquoldquoThe next time he played a Test against India at Kanpur later that year he scored 194 He said lsquoMaybe Ria was trying to tell me something When you reach a situation like that you either labour over it or try and pick up the pieces as soon as possible If you donrsquot do the latter the situation will get the better of yoursquo rdquoGreenidge it can be recalled was the first West Indies wicket to fall in the 1983 World Cup final shouldering arms to a Balvinder Singh Sandhu inswinger The following year he made up for his Lordrsquos flop by stunning David Gowerrsquos Englishmen with a chase that yielded 342 runs scored inside three sessions 214 of them coming from that broad Symonds blade The Greenidge effect on West Indies cricket didnrsquot end there Another double century was carved in the same series at Old Trafford and there were two more before his Test career ended in 1991Unwavering focus is one of the reasons why Greenidge sits well in the Sir category with former teammates Viv Richards Clive Lloyd Andy Roberts Richie Richardson and Curtly Ambrose Southampton should be proud toomiddayrsquos group sports editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stance He tweets ClaytonMurzelloSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper