Land of Maurice Foster

WHO now remembers Maurice Foster? Thirty years ago, this Jamaican batsman almost changed the shape of world cricket. He had scored handsomely in the Shell Shield, yet the West Indian selectors would not choose him. This led to a popular movement of protest in his native island. There was even a threat, a serious threat, that Jamaica would apply for separate membership to the International Cricket Council. Had that happened, other islands might have followed suit, and we would never have witnessed the remarkable, combined West Indies side of the 1980s.

Jamaica is one of the larger Caribbean islands, with an honourable cricket history of its own. The greatest of all West Indian batsmen, George Headley, was Jamaican. Half-Jamaican, actually, but after being born in Panama, his mother brought him home to her island. A restless lady, she later wished to migrate, with her family, to the United States. Tickets were booked, but that particular ship was cancelled. It would be a few weeks before another vessel arrived. Meanwhile, Headley was invited to play for Jamaica against a visiting M.C.C. side. He scored a 100, and permanently cancelled his passage to America.

Headley started as an off-side player, and developed his on-side game on tour in Australia. C.L.R. James and Ray Robinson, greatly respected critics both, have suggested that on sticky wickets he was better than Bradman. On normal wickets Headley was second only to him. He was sometimes referred to as the "Black Bradman", although Learie Constantine chose to speak of the Australian as the "White Headley". He is, to date, the only man to have hit a 100 in each innings of a Lord's Test. By any reckoning he would be an early choice for an All-Time World XI to play Mars.

Other Jamaican batsmen include the left-handed opener, Allan Rae, who toured India in 1948-49 and England in 1950, scoring plenty of runs in either country. Later there was Lawrence Rowe, a beautifully balanced right-hander, who scored 214 and 100 not out against New Zealand on Test debut, and 302 against England two years hence, but whose career was then curtailed by an illness in his eyes and, most peculiarly for a cricketer, an allergy to grass. Later still has come Jimmy Adams, known in this country as "Padams", less elegant than Rae or Rowe perhaps, but with an equal distaste for leaving the wicket without first spending four or five hours on it. Adams is a versatile fellow who can field well anywhere, can bowl slow left-arm and keep wickets for his side too.

From Jamaica have come the three finest stumpers to have been capped for the West Indies. First in point of time was F.C.M. ("Gerry") Alexander, who selflessly played under Frank Worrell after having himself been captain of the West Indies. Then, in the mid-1960s, came Jackie Hendricks, who lacked Alexander's ability with the bat but was a better keeper, especially to the slow bowling of Lance Gibbs and Gary Sobers. But the best of the lot was unquestionably Jeff Dujon. Dujon displayed courage and athleticism of a high order while keeping wickets in 81 Test matches to the likes of Andy Roberts, Malcolm Marshall and Joel Garner. He did not keep much to spin, but was withal an elegant player of slow bowling, and always good enough to be chosen for the West Indies as a batsman alone.

Possibly the most tragic figure in Jamaican cricket was O'Neill Gordon ("Collie") Smith. He was a magnificent attacking batsman and useful off-break bowler, as gifted an all-rounder, they said, as his close contemporary and closer friend, Garfield Sobers. On the 1957 tour of England, Collie Smith hit two brilliant centuries, and in India a year-and-a-half later scored two 50s in the Bombay Test and exactly 100 in Delhi. Like Clyde Walcott before him and Gordon Greenidge since, he drove ferociously off the back-foot. Smith died in September 1959, aged 26, in a car accident with Sobers at the wheel. His friend later wrote, with feeling, of how he thereafter played for the West Indies as if playing for Collie, too.

Jamaica has produced but one high-class slow bowler, that little pal of mine, Alf Valentine. Alf did not have the mystique of his colleague Sonny Ramadhin, but could spin it as much and with as good control. It was Ram and Val, who with the three W's helped the West Indies to their first, defining overseas series victory over England, in 1950. Halfway through that series Valentine broke his only pair of spectacles. The National Health Services, then in the pink of condition, promptly replaced the glasses, free. What the England batsmen felt about the unpatriotic doctors is not on record.

Geography and history both determine that this island, like the others, would produce fast bowlers of quality. None more furious than Roy Gilchrist who, like Collie Smith toured England in 1957 and India in 1958-59. Halfway through the latter tour, the West Indies were down to play the North Zone in Amritsar. One of the local openers, Swaranjit Singh, liked to wear gaily coloured turbans.

Gilchrist bounced the batsman, hitting him on the head. The fast bowler later claimed that he was challenged by Singh's taunt issued via public loudspeakers before the match, that he would "tame" Gilchrist. Others think that the bowler was provoked by the size and colour of the headgear.

Anyway, his captain Gerry Alexander asked him to pitch the ball up. But Gilly bounced the opener again, and again. That was the last day of play he saw on tour, or ever again as a West Indies player, for Alexander had him sent home for "insubordination".

A Jamaican fast bowler fortunate to have a longer career in Tests was Michael Anthony Holding. As a boy, he had to choose between a career in cricket and in athletics. He might have followed those great Jamaican quarter-milers Arthur Wint and Herb McKinley, and won a sheaf of Olympic medals. Luckily for us, he chose cricket instead. Holding had a long but smoothly accelerating run, a lovely action and superb control. He was known, with reason, as the "Rolls Royce of fast bowlers".

I never saw Holding "live", but can pass on three pictures, one of these stationary. The first comes from the 1983 World Cup final, when he bowled Mohinder Amarnath with an off-cutter, the ball hastening down the Lord's ridge. The second occurred that winter, in a Test played I forget where, in Ahmedabad perhaps. In his delivery stride, Holding moved sharply to the left, and from the edge of the crease aimed at leg stump. The ball held its own for most of its flight, but in its dying moments swung away to the right, a peach of an outswinger which destiny had marked for the off stump of Anshuman Gaekwad. The last picture is one that Holding might wish to have suppressed. It was captured by Patrick Eager, prince of cricket photographers, on a tour of New Zealand. Now in that country, and in those days, home batsmen had only to get their pads in front to be declared not out. After his twelfth appeal of the morning had been turned down (and at least six of them were out), Holding sent the wickets flying at the bowler's end. The follow through was caught by Eager: It is a portrait of extreme anger coupled with ineffable beauty. In the background are stumps and bails scattering, in the foreground is the athlete in motion. The left leg is bolt upright; the right leg is perpendicular, having arrived at the end of its exquisitely effective swing. Even in the ugliest of acts this man could not seem less than graceful.

Holding's heir, in almost all respects, has been Courtney Walsh, who played for the same club, the same island, and the same Test side. He is every bit as good a bowler and a gentler man besides. With Walsh having just broken the world record of most Test wickets, with Adams now captain, and with other Jamaicans like Nehemiah Perry and Ricardo Powell not short of international matches, the Jamaicans will not, cricketwise, secede from the West Indies in a hurry. That shall not stop us from choosing an all-time Jamaician XI, which should, in batting order, read: 1. A.F. Rae 2. L.G. Rowe 3. G.A. Headley, 4. J.C. Adams, 5. O.G. Smith 6. P.J.L. Dujon 7. F.C.M. Alexander 8 M.A. Holding 9. R. Gilchrist 10. A.L. Valentine 11. C.A. Walsh.

Headley will captain, Dujon and Alexander will alternate behind the stumps, and Walsh and Valentine will toss for the position of number eleven in the batting order. The side shall bring along its own umpires, Douglas Sang Hue from the 1950's and Steve Buckner from our own time, fine and truly "neutral" men both.

RAMACHANDRA GUHA

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Sport
Previous : Sri Lanka crumbles yet again
Next     : France takes on swashbuckling Spain