By Neto Baptiste
Fifty years since making his Test debut for the West Indies and becoming the first Antiguan and Barbudan to play for the regional squad, Sir Andy Roberts said that having to deal with the inter-island selection politics that plagued the games in the region at the time, helped him to become the player he was.
Speaking on the Good Morning Jojo sports show on Wednesday, March 6, the day marking half a century to the day he first bowled a ball for the West Indies, the now 73-year-old said he quickly realised that he had to be perfect 100 percent of the time in order to maintain his presence in the squad.
“Pressure never crossed my mind until after I got dropped for the next game and I had to go to England to re-establish myself in County cricket. From there on, I realised that from the small islands ,whether you’re quick, whether you’re swinging or whatever, once you come from the small islands you’ll have pressure. I said to myself that I cannot be as good as Holder, Boyce, Julian, and Gregory Armstrong, who were coming up. I had to be better than them; hence the hard work and the training and everything else started from there,” Sir Andy said.
Only 23 years old when he made his debut, the Urlings resident said his initial call-up to the squad came as a shock and practically at the eleventh hour.
“I wasn’t originally in the team and we were playing in Guyana, Combined Islands vs Guyana, and Keith Boyce got injured and Rohan Khani, who was the captain, came up to me and said, ‘we may want you to stay off in Barbados’. When the match finished we left Guyana to go Barbados to come to Antigua but nobody said anything to me, so the plane went through Barbados; my gear and everything went through.
“The night I was home and there were some young men and I who would lime together and we had a place we called the ghetto; so I was in the ghetto. I don’t know how Lester Bird found me but somebody came and told me that Lester Bird is outside to see you. He was president of the ACA [Antigua Cricket Association] at the time and he said to me that they want me to go back to Barbados,” the former player said.
Sir Andy claimed 202 wickets in 47 Test matches and another 87 in 56 One Day International (ODI) matches and was nicknamed “Hit Man” as many times, batsmen failed in their attempt to elude his crafty bouncers.
He said he would not change much if given the opportunity.
“Nothing; the only thing I would say is to be more upright [when bowling] instead of falling over and that is the only thing I would change,” he said.
It took Sir Andy less than two and a-half years to reach 100 Test wickets, the quickest at that point, and his best years were unquestionably in the middle 1970s, before the Packer revolution.
Sir Andy formed part of the “quartet” of West Indian fast bowlers from the mid-70s to the early 80s — the others being Michael Holding, Joel Garner, and Colin Croft — that had such a devastating effect on opposition batsmen at both Test and One Day International level.
He was also part of the West Indies team that won the first two Prudential World Cups in England in 1975 and 1979.