David Hopps, courtesy of ESPNcricinfo, where the title is “Peter Roebuck’s anguish at Somerset in 1986”.. with highlighting emphasis being the work of The Editor Cricketique
Richards and Roebuck at the wicket in a county game. Roebuck reveals he lived in fear of Richards’ temper © Getty Images
The civil war that beset Somerset cricket more than 30 years ago was all the more remarkable because of the unimposing, bespectacled figure at its centre. Peter Roebuck would not have immediately struck a casual observer as a man capable of going to war. An unconventional loner, gauche even with close friends, he did not meld easily with either the old-fashioned administrators in charge of the club or the imposing superstars, Ian Botham, Viv Richards and Joel Garner, who would eventually be expunged from a Somerset dressing room that had fallen on hard times.