Viv Richards

Widely regarded as the most devastating Test match batter of all time, even decades after his heyday, when T20 had made big hitting de rigeur, Viv Richards was a swaggering force of nature and an emblem of West Indian supremacy in their 1970s and '80s heyday.

Richards' power was awesome, he hooked devastatingly, and he never wore a helmet, rocking back from his front-foot base to take the ball from his eyeline in front of square. He could get so far forward that he was able to plant his left foot outside the line of off stump,eliminating lbw and creating a leg-stump line from where he would flick bowlers relentlessly through midwicket. Straighten the ball down the line of the stumps and the bowler stood a chance, but Richards rarely missed and they ran a terrible risk.

After two single-figure scores in his debut Test, in Bangalore, he served more accurate notice of how he meant to go on when he produced 192 not out, the centrepiece of a West Indies innings win, in his second.

Possessed early of an eye for the grand gesture and a yen for the big score, in 1976, his second full year in Test cricket, Richards hit an extraordinary lode of form, making 1710 runs - which stood for 30 years as a record for the most runs made in a calendar year. That kicked off a seven-year run during which he averaged over 66. Having feasted on Australia away with a hundred, 98, and 50, he stepped up a gear with three large centuries against India at home, before producing the coup de grace: two doubles, a hundred and two sixties in the series against England that will forever be linked with his name; he finished with 829 runs from those four Tests in England, still the most anyone has made in as few matches.

There was no finer expression of West Indies' dominance in the era when they started to get the hang of flattening oppositions in their sleep than Richards on song. Series after unbeaten series, his was the face bowlers grew to fear, as his team despatched everyone in their path. He would go on to make over 800 Test runs in a year three more times.

From late 1979, over 16 Tests in four consecutive series, he made over 340 runs apiece and averaged better than 63, against England, Pakistan and Australia. Before that, he won West Indies their second World Cup title with a savage, breathtaking 138 not out in the final.

Another all-time ODI classic, which still routinely haunts the upper reaches of all-time top tens, came along in 1984. England were at the receiving end again; Richards made 189, the rest of the West Indians 83, and over a hundred of the runs came in the company of the last man, Michael Holding, who made 10.

Two years on, another incandescent performance resulted in a shattered record at his home ground in St John's in 1986: a hundred off just 56 balls in a Test against, yes, England. That particular mark too stood for just shy of 30 years.

Many said Richards delayed his departure from the game, and it was true he was something of a shadow of himself when he called it a day, in 1991. He went on to occasionally stints in commentary, and served as a mentor at Quetta Gladiators in the PSL through the second half of the 2010s and beyond.