Cricket: Insight into man behind legend of Clive Lloyd

Dec 14 2007 by Our Correspondent, Liverpool Daily Post

TO the generation of Lancashire supporters for whom the county’s appearance in the Gillette Cup Final became a regular event at the end of cricket season Clive Lloyd remains a cherished hero from their sporting past.

Thousands of West Indies cricket fans hold the Guyanan in similarly high regard. Lloyd, after all, was the captain who led their side when they were, beyond serious dispute, the best team in the world.

Yet despite his undoubted status as one of the best batsmen in the game’s history and also one of the most inspirational international skippers, Lloyd has never been honoured with a biography.

Until now. Helped by seemingly unfettered access to this modest man, Simon Lister, a cricket writer and radio producer, has penned “Supercat – The Authorised Biography of Clive Lloyd”, and by doing so he may just have solved the Christmas present problems of those wondering what to give their sports-mad friends and relations this year.

Lister’s 224-page volume is far more than just another cricket book however. It certainly soars above the catchpenny variety produced by players who, on the strength of a few Tests, feel it necessary to churn out the first of what will be probably be a number of autobiographies.

Instead, a series of lengthy interviews, a huge amount of research (including a visit to Lloyd’s native Georgetown) and a mighty dollop of insight have resulted in a book which gets behind the man who, lest we forget local pride, also scored three first-class centuries at Aigburth.

“I knew I had to go to Guyana,” said Lister. “I felt that Clive’s childhood was key to the exploration of the rest of his personality. By the time he was 14 his father had died and he had to bring up the rest if his family on his own.”

This early bereavement was not the end of Lloyd’s traumas. Many cricket fans may not know that the future captain of the West Indies nearly died of tetanus when he was a child nor that he was once at risk of permanent paraplegia when he fell awkwardly attempting to take a catch in 1971.

As for cricketing matters, Lister devotes many pages of careful analysis to Lloyd’s decision to join Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket and also his leadership of a West Indies side which included players not only of different nationalities but also of different faiths and ethnicities.

“It’s not so much a book about the cricket Clive played as it’s a book about the man who played in those matches,” said Lister, who unashamedly confesses that Lloyd has been a hero of his since he saw him play at the Oval in 1976. “It’s not a book of scores, it’s a book about the man who became the cricketer.”

Unsurprisingly, Lloyd’s former colleagues in the all-conquering West Indies side are keen to pay tribute to the captain who took their individual talents and blended them into a magnificent and fearsome, unit. Lister was late for an appointment with the former Test opener Desmond Haynes but his apologies were brushed aside. “It doesn’t matter,” said the Barbadian. “I would have sat here all day for Lloydy.”

A combination of such unforced generosity and the author’s own industry has produced a distinguished book which is beautifully written and exceptionally informative. So by all means buy a copy as a Christmas present for a family member who is even now counting the days until next April. But if you do, don’t expect them to help with the washing-up until well into Boxing Day.

“Supercat – The Authorised Biography of Clive Lloyd” by Simon Lister is published by Fairfield Books at £16.