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(Part eleven.) Angry ‘outsider’.
In any discussion about an all-time West Indies Test XI, the name Gordon Greenidge is almost always included as one of the openers.
This has as much to do with Greenidge’s technical correctness and fiercely combative attitude to the new ball as it does with his impressive overall numbers from nearly 17 years at international level.
Photo: PA Photos.
By the time the first Cricket World Cup came around though, the Barbadian-born British resident was still working on cementing a place in the regional side and also on gaining the acceptance of fans from the land of his birth.
So, with 40 days to go to the 50th anniversary of the West Indies’ triumph in that inaugural final on 21 June 1975, we look at where Greenidge’s cricketing journey was at that point.
He was a young man desperate to make a name for himself wearing the burgundy cap having rejected overtures to play for England—for whom he had qualified by residence after migrating there at age 14.
Photo: Cricbuzz.
Maybe it was Greenidge’s early challenges that contributed to the demeanour of someone who came across as perpetually vex with the world. His parents broke-up in Barbados when he was a child and his mother moved to the UK. He eventually joined her as a 14-year-old and encountered racist treatment there.
When Greenidge attacked the new ball, his unrestrained ferocity might have been his way of releasing all that pent-up rage.
Despite two mediocre seasons of Shell Shield cricket for Barbados, where he endured constant abuse as a “foreigner”, he was selected for the West Indies tour of the Indian sub-continent in 1974/75.
Photo: PA Photos.
His regional pick was probably on the strength of his flourishing partnership at the top of the order for English county, Hampshire, where he batted alongside the outstanding South African Barry Richards. And there was also a belligerent, career-best 273 not out for the DH Robins XI against Pakistan at the end of the 1974 English season.
Greenidge was on the verge of a hundred in his debut innings when he was run out for 93, but made amends with 107 in the second as West Indies won the first Test in Bengaluru.
However, there was only one other score over 50 in his next eight innings, compounded by a back injury when deputising as wicketkeeper near the end of the fifth and final Test. These setbacks meant he was far from a sure pick going forward.
Greenidge did make the World Cup squad. It meant he avoided the deep sense of hurt he felt two years earlier when, in anticipating a call-up to replace the injured Steve Camacho on the 1973 England tour.
He was left, in his own words, “in a state of shock for what seemed like weeks” by the selectors’ choice of Ron Headley, son of the legendary George Headley.
He had all the physical tools. Yet it always seemed that anger, whether at something or someone, intensified the fire within.
Next: Alvin Kallicharran—a pocked-sized stylist.
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Fazeer Mohammed is a journalist/broadcaster with almost 40 years’ experience across a range of media.
His interest in cricket, and particularly its history, started at home via his father’s small collection of autobiographies and magazines, offering perspectives and context which have informed his commentary and analysis on contemporary issues in the game.
