The landmark birthdays of heroes always serve to underline our own mortality and with Wednesday’s three-score anniversary comes the stark personal realisation that it is more than half my lifetime ago since the eye-popping double-take that day I first set eyes on [Viv] Richards 38 midsummers ago at Somerset’s dear old Bath Festival in 1974 when the gangly young smiler, glistening with gaiety and adventure, clocked Yorkshire’s Test bowlers Chris Old and Geoff Cope all over in a festive flurry of sixers. A new star had risen in the west.