Carlisle Alonza Best is surely not one of the best from Caribbean cricket but he believes that he was stopped from being one. A top order batter, who represented the West Indies in eight Tests and 24 ODIs in the late 80s, says some powerful and politically influential people in the Caribbean, including Sir Vivian Richards, leveraged their position to deprive him of opportunities.
“I didn’t find favour from the selectors. I was given bits and pieces of opportunity that perhaps were not enough and certainly not consistent with any real rationale. I think it was more political. My exclusion was principally, in my view, political, under the leadership of [Viv] Richards,” Best (65), who had a century each in five-day and one-day formats, told Cricbuzz in an exclusive interaction.
“There was a time when he could not resist my inclusion forever because I kept performing in the regional tournament called Shell Shield but he did not want players from Barbados,” Best, who captained the island, said, sharpening his knives against the former West Indies captain. “In my book, I refer to him in not-so-kind terms. You said a powerful force. I don’t think I use such agreeable language. I thought he was a bully. And domineering. And insular.”
Insular? “Yes, insular. He preferred his Antiguan colleagues in the team. People like (Curtly) Ambrose, (Ken) Benjamin, Richie Richardson and Keith Atherton. He favoured them over others. A more politically correct way to put it would be that he preferred his Leeward Island players.”
Asked on what basis he makes those points, Best further said, “That is subjective. I would not be privy to that. The outcomes speak for themselves. The outcomes, what actually transpired, speak for themselves. Given his actions and what happened, clearly tell you that I was not favoured by him. I captained Barbados. I captained a West Indies team to Zimbabwe and was successful. I won the regional championship at the age of 24.” Best scored 5439 runs in 90 first-class games with 13 centuries and 24 half-centuries. “Richards was not for me. He was not approachable, or accessible. It was the talk around at the time, certainly among us the Bajans (as Barbados cricketers are called).”
Both Richards and Best played together five Tests, in the Caribbean and outside of it. “We were at the crease together. At Sabina Park. I made 64 (Richards scored 21 and 37 in that). And we were at the Oval together at Kensington, Bridgetown, too. He made 70 and I scored 164 (versus England in 1990). So he knew my ability. But he was not favourable to me for some reason. I don’t know what the reason was but people say that it was because I was working in a bank, I was a university graduate in economics. He didn’t think that such a person should be playing Test cricket, such an educated person.”
Best, who averaged 28.50 in 13 Test innings and 38.85 in 154 first-class innings, intends to come out with a tell-all book in which he wishes to reveal the underbelly of West Indies cricket and how the captains of the sides over the years have had their way. It will eponymously be named ‘Best of Both Worlds’. “I have the outline (of the book). I just haven’t had the time and energy to put into it. I would like to go back to it and get it out by the end of the year. And yeah, there will be stunning things about Richards and West Indies cricket. Because he was a bully, I was not prepared to be bullied by anybody. So therefore, he and I weren’t the best of friends.” They never met after their associations at the ground. “Because he is from Antigua and I am in Barbados.”
He would also explain the intra-Caribbean intricacies. “There was a feeling, particularly among the Leeward Islands players in the Richards camp, that we were a dominant force in West Indies cricket. We always had the most Bajans on the team and so on. And that obviously they were jealous of. Richards was determined that he was going to change that. Therefore he was not going to increase the numbers of Bajans in the team outside of (Desmond) Haynes and (Gordon) Greenidge, (Malcolm) Marshall and (Joel) Garner. The only way another Bajan would get a chance was to replace one of them.”
Funnily enough, he would say, the number of players from a territory or a country/island of the West Indies was directly related to who the captain was. “So (Brian) Lara brought in a lot of Trinidadians, (Carl) Hooper brought in a lot of Guyanese, Jimmy Adams brought in players from Jamaicans and obviously, as I said, Richards brought in his Leeward Islands people. Not that all of them weren’t deserving, but they were preferred.”
Then he continued to say that things have changed for the better lately. “There has been a modest change; it is less political and less partisan. Now it is hardly distinguishable, hardly noticeable. Current captain Rovman Powell has no such biases. I don’t think he is inclined to behave that sort of way. And Desmond (Haynes), the chief selector is very level-headed in terms of fair and equal opportunity for players, regardless of the territory.”
Best, the uncle of former West Indies fast bowler Tino Best, was eventually replaced by Brian Lara in the West Indian team, who went on to be one of the greats of the game. “Now, secretly, I felt that what Brian achieved, I was deprived of achieving. That should have been me. I got my finger broken in Lahore. And Brian played in my place because of that injury. And the rest is history. If politics had not played, I might have been his captain.”
When contacted, Richards refused to give credence to Best’s comments. “I am hearing that particular statement in a big way. Anyone who knows Carlisle Best would know exactly his character. So I leave at that,” he said, shrugging the comments off with a dismissive smile.
In 1998, he had told the local media that batting alongside Richards in his debut Test was very helpful to him. “Batting with Viv was always an enormous relief. When he was at the wicket, all the attention was switched to him. I remember him telling me, ‘Bessie if you stick around, it could get sweet for you. It paid off.'” Reminded him of these comments, and he said those comments were not wrong and his views on Viv have not changed with time or age. “Those (being a bully, domineering, insular) were his natural characteristics,” he said. He also recalled Kapil Dev wondering why he did not play more Tests.
Finally, what else would his book be about? Best shots back, saying, “About the Big Four. The Big 4 of Barbados, the same hands. Greenidge and Haynes opened the batting and Marshall and Garner opened the bowling. So I reveal incisively, and not all that pleasantly. Not all that pleasant.”