By Mike Selvey From The Guardian UK

A new book recalls the start of Caribbean domination and how Clive Lloyd led the islands to ‘fight fire with fire’ and become legends of the game

Geoff Miller, erstwhile Derbyshire and England off-spinner, national selector and wonderful raconteur, tells a terrific story of the time he was in the England party that toured the Caribbean in the spring of 1981.

It was the net session before the third Test at Kensington Oval in Barbados and the two teams were practising alongside one another. Miller watched as the West Indies gun batsmen, Gordon Greenidge, Desmond Haynes, Viv Richards and Clive Lloyd, had a bat against the top bowlers, Andy Roberts, Michael Holding (who a few days later was to deliver to Geoffrey Boycott perhaps the most famous over of all), Joel Garner and Colin Croft, and when done the octet retreated to the dressing room leaving Larry Gomes, next on the list, to warm up against the Bajan net bowlers brought in for the day.

Easy? The net bowlers, according to Miller, were Malcolm Marshall, Wayne Daniel, Sylvester Clarke and Ezra Moseley, a quartet which would compete strongly with any fielded in the history of the game – such riches. And players now are worried of the damage that can be caused by just one bowler of high pace in Mitchell Johnson.

It is for this reason above all else that I believe Graham Gooch’s unbeaten match-winning 154 at Headingley in 1991, in gloomy conditions, against Marshall, Curtly Ambrose, Patrick Patterson and Courtney Walsh to be head and shoulders the finest Test match innings of my lifetime and quite possibly that of anyone else. It was made off relentless high-velocity bowling, over after over, hour after hour.

Greg Chappell has lent it perspective when speaking of what it was like during the era of World Series Super Tests in the Caribbean, when he probably got half a dozen or so deliveries an hour to which he might get forward (he was looking to do that, simply to take advantage when they came). From the mid-70s through to the 90s, when the production line of quicks who augmented some brilliant batting began to dry up, West Indies were arguably the most formidable team the game has ever seen.

Five years ago the British film director Stevan Riley made a superb award-winning documentary about the rise of West Indies cricket from a dysfunctional collection of Caribbean calypso charmers to this team that dominated the game.

Fire In Babylon contained a wealth of hitherto unseen footage of the great fast bowlers in action and identified the 1974-75 tour of Australia as being the catalyst that turned things round. West Indies, under their new captain Lloyd, were beaten 5-1, outgunned by the pace of Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson. Lloyd, stung by the defeat, changed the ethos, gathered together his wolfpack to fight fire with yet more powerful fire and changed the face of the game. History tells us that Lloyd has been the most significant captain of West Indies since Frank Worrell.

Leading West Indies, a regional sporting ideal unique to cricket anyway, is perhaps like no other role, requiring not just cricketing skill and sense but the political nous to unite factions with players of different nationalities, ethnicities and religions.

This I am mentioning because during the Edgbaston Test match a new cricket book arrived at home, during the writing of which I had been asked for a few thoughts. Simon Lister is a senior news producer for BBC and a long-time writer on cricket, who some years ago wrote Supercat, an acclaimed biography of Lloyd. Now, inspired he says on the cover by Riley’s film, he has fleshed out the idea further with a book that carries the same name and a subtitle ‘How the West Indies cricket team brought a people to its feet’. My eye was drawn to an endorsement on the front cover. “I doubt there will be a better book written about this period in West Indies cricket history,” says Lloyd, who will have seen and no doubt contributed to countless previous efforts.

There has been no time to read the book yet but Lloyd has written a foreword and, if it is representative of the book, (which I’m sure it will prove to be) then Lister’s will prove an important work, for Lloyd’s words are worth reading as a short standalone essay on what cricket meant to the region, not just in the specific sense but in the broadest. “We turned West Indies into winners,” Lloyd writes, “bringing joy and respect to the region.

“We had to fight hard to get where we did. We had battles with our own administrators. We took on those less discerning people who believed that men and women from the Caribbean had nothing good to offer. We stood firm against those inside the game who tried to blunt our talents by changing the laws of cricket. The players came through it all but at times it was very tough.”

It is a moving and articulate extrapolation of a complex situation. Finally Lloyd tells how for inspiration in the dark times he drew on the examples of predecessors and how now the future of West Indies cricket, if it is not to fragment into simply island representation (as one sometimes hears of Trinidad, for example), could depend on generations recognising and taking strength from those who have passed on the baton. Actually that last bit is a lesson for all.

Fire In Babylon: How The West Indies Cricket Team Brought Its People To Its Feet. By Simon Lister, with a foreword by Clive Lloyd. Yellow Jersey Press £18.99

IMAGE: Clive Lloyd and the victorious West Indies team at Lord’s after winning the 1979 World Cup

For more on this story go to: http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/aug/03/west-indies-cricket-clive-lloyd