Barry Anderson Richards was born on 21 July 1945 at Morningside, Durban, Natal in South Africa.
His major teams were South Africa, Gloucestershire (all too briefly!), Hampshire (an association with which most of us are familiar), Natal, South Australia and Transvaal. He was a right-hand opening batsman and occasional right-arm offbreak bowler.
His career spanned the 1964/65 season through to 1982/83. He played 339 first-class matches in which he amassed 28,358 runs in 576 innings, 58 of which were not out, at 54.74 with 80 hundreds and 152 fifties. He had a safe pair of hands which held 367 catches.
His talent was apparent at an early age – at 17 he captained a South African schools side which toured England. One match was against an invitational side which included Richie Benaud who later observed of Richards that “even then it was quite clear that he was a player out of the ordinary”. A young Richards played alongside Mike Procter in 1 match for Gloucestershire against the touring South Africans – they put on a century together.
His highest score was 356 playing a Sheffield Shield match for South Australia against Western Australia at the WACA in November 1970. He scored 325 of those runs in a day against an attack which included Dennis Lillee, Garth McKenzie and Tony Lock. In that 1970/71 season Richards scored 1,538 runs at 109.85 breaking records held by Don Bradman.
Richards scored a hundred before lunch 9 times and hit 1,000 runs in a season on 15 occasions. When the English game opened itself to overseas stars in 1968 Richards had offers from Hampshire and Sussex. He chose the former and, despite a tricky start, proceeded to score 2,395 runs in his first season – more runs than any other batsman. He was thus chosen as one of Wisden’s “Five Cricketers of the Year” with the almanack saying that “Richards’ horizons seem limitless, and it will be fascinating to see how far his talents will take him”. At Hampshire he formed a formidable, and world class, opening partnership with Gordon Greenidge who learned at lot from his senior partner.