Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Former West Indies fast bowler and cricket commentator, widely regarded as one of the greatest bowlers in Test history.
On the island
Eight records
Because I want to tell people this is what I am. Don't try to make me over. Accept me as I am.
This song actually doing a Lauren is Bob Marley taking a speech by Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie from Ethiopia and turning that speech into his song.
This now is one that I again remember from my youth. And this is my early encounters now with anyone from South Africa.
Again, this goes back to my youth. A gentleman that used to go to my sister and he had a car... one of the first cassettes he got was of the Winstons.
What's Going On by Marvin Gaye was one of the first protest songs, it was a big hit.
Another day in paradise is what we're gonna hear next from Phil Collins. And again, it's about people not recognizing the good fortune that they have.
That's What Friends Are ForFavourite
Dionne Warwick, Stevie Wonder, Elton John and Gladys Knight
And this is a great song and throughout my life I have got to appreciate this more and more and it's that's what friends are for, very important people in your life.
There was an expression in the Caribbean... you say I throw me stone. Whoever did it leak is them ball out. Meaning whoever the stone hit, that person will cry out. And whoever the cap fits, they will wear it.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:33You've said that this is your last year in the commentary box. You're unafraid to speak the truth about what's going on in the game. How is that received at home?
In the Caribbean, I've been called biased before. You talk about somebody from Trinidad, he doesn't like Trinidad. He doesn't like people from Antigua. He doesn't like anyone from Guyana. Eventually, when I criticized the Jamaican where I am from, they said, oh, I don't like that particular person. But that's just the way it is. After a while, although some people might not like some of the things that I say, they respect what I'm saying. So I don't worry about that too much.
Presenter asks
3:43What fires your imagination about Test cricket?
Because it is an ultimate test of character, of skill, of longevity. You go out and play a 120 ball or 100 ball game and a batsman, for instance, goes out there, he gets 45 runs from 15 balls, and he comes in every everyone tells him he has done a great job. 15 balls, Lauren. 15 balls? You go out and you bowl four overs and you may get two for thirty. They say, Oh, you have done a fantastic job. For four overs, can you do it for ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen overs? That is the true test of someone's ability, not four overs.
Presenter asks
5:34The keepsakes
The luxury
I'm going to take a football. I can't take a cricket bat or a ball because I have no one to play with. I can play football on my own.
Tell me about that moment [when you gave the impromptu four-minute monologue on racism in July 2020].
These things have been bugging me and in on in my mind for decades, but I just let it just wash over me and I move on. And, you know, Lauren, I just wish that we could come to the point in life where people just see people as people. And people stop seeing religions and races and genders and that sort of a thing. And we are just people. And it just came out. It just came flowing. I didn't even realize it. I spoke for four minutes.
Presenter asks
7:09If I'd grown up in the UK I would be dead now. What do you mean by that?
When I was a young man, Lauren, I was a little bit fiery. If people remember my cricketing career, I kicked out a stump in New Zealand in 1980 because of my fiery nature at that point in time. I've mellowed a lot. I have calmed down a lot. But growing up with that sort of fiery temperament, I could have done something that I should not have done. And especially if I had lived in America, I wouldn't have gotten to teenage.
Presenter asks
8:21What is your perspective on players taking the knee before games?
Black Lives Matter being a political movement, I don't really care about. I care about the three words. Black lives matter. People with black skin, their lives matter. That is what I care about. So all those who are looking for little pieces of thread to try and unravel the entire situation, it's because they do not want change. They cannot give me any other reason for trying to unravel it.
Presenter asks
21:06How did [the Tony Greig 'grovel' comment] affect you and the team?
It spurred us on, Lauren. It spurred us tremendously because for that comment on that particular word to be coming from a South African during the apartheid era, we didn't take kindly to it. And whenever he came to the crease, the fast bowlers found an extra yard or two of pace. ... Later on in life, Lauren, and this is what education is about, I got to understand that Tony Greig was in no way a racist. He just used the wrong term. ... 1976, at the over, the last Test match, when we made over 600 runs in an innings and beat them by lots, when the England team was leaving the field for the last time, and the West Indians started to shout, Grovel, Greig, grovel. He went down on his hands and knees and crawled the last few steps off the field beyond the ropes and then stood up again to walk inside. Racists do not behave that way.
“I feel very lucky, Lauren. To be honest, I feel very, very fortunate, because my life could have been so different but for this game cricket.”
“I just wish that we could come to the point in life where people just see people as people. And people stop seeing religions and races and genders and that sort of a thing. And we are just people.”
“After a while, after coming to England so many years and then being involved in society itself, meeting so many Caribbean people here in England, it started to wear on me, to be honest. It was not just something I could keep on shrugging off.”
“I never want to hurt someone. What I want to do was intimidate them and to frighten them or for them to play a shot that they were incapable of playing and getting themselves out.”
“Winning a race and going out there and holding on to those reins and leading that horse into the winner's enclosure, that gave me more pleasure than taking a five wicket haul.”