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(Part 35.) No unlucky 13.
Clive Lloyd’s 1975 Cricket World Cup squad marked the first time that a West Indies team toured England to play limited-over matches exclusively.
It was also the 13th visit there by a Caribbean side—certainly no ill omen as it turned out—in the 75 years since the very first regional squad toured there as part of the effort to attain Test match status.
Photo: CWI Media.
That status would not come until two more “preparatory” tours were undertaken and was followed by nine official Test trips from 1928 to 1973, where the West Indies graduated from talented but indisciplined newcomers to supremely professional world-beaters.
And that was even before the era of invincibility from 1980 to 1995.
So, with 16 days to go to the 50th anniversary of Lloyd lifting the Prudential World Cup on 21 June, we remember those 12 previous campaigns as stepping stones to greatness.
Photo: George Beldham.
1900: This pioneering side was always going to struggle in alien conditions and against opponents whose standard of play was generally way above what prevailed in the Caribbean. Of 17 matches, none classified as first-class, they won only five, drawing four and losing eight.
Charles Ollivierre led the way with the bat with 883 runs and opted to stay in England thereafter, becoming the first black West Indian to be play county cricket. Seamer Tommie Burton topped the wicket-takers with 78.
1906: Another taxing campaign in which 10 of 19 matches were lost, seven won and two drawn against mainly county first and second XI opposition.
Lebrun Constantine, Learie’s father, topped the run-scorers with 776 while fellow Trini, left-arm spinner Sydney Smith, led the wicket-takers with 66. Slow progress, but progress nonetheless.
1923: It was on the strength of this tour that Test status was granted. George Challenor, the first truly outstanding West Indies batsman, amassed 1,556 runs at the top of the order as West Indies won 13 of 28 matches on a near four-month odyssey, drawing eight and losing seven.
Pacer George Francis’ 82 wickets was a precursor to the great fast bowling feats of the coming decades.
1928: Test status at last! West Indies, led by Karl Nunes, join Australia, England and South Africa for three Tests of a chastening campaign. All were lost, starting at Lord’s, by innings margins.
Back row: (from left) Wilton St Hill, George Francis, James Neblett, Frank Martin, George Challenor, Joe Clifford Roach, Learie Constantine.
Front row (from left): Maurice Fernandes, Claude Wight, Karl Nunes, ‘Snuffy’ Browne and Herman Griffith.
Photo: Bob Thomas/ Popperfoto.
With many of the top players from 1923 past their best, Freddie Martin led the struggling batsmen with 175 runs while another speedster, Herman Griffith, topped the wicket-takers with 11.
1933: Another three-Test series lost, but this time by a 2-0 margin as a draw in Manchester, aided by centuries from George Headley and Ivan Barrow were clear signs of progress.
Headley had already made his mark in his debut campaign in 1930 against the same opponents in the West Indies. He enhanced it with a series-leading 277 runs here.
At the wicket is Arthur Wood and at the slip is Wally Hammond.
Headley carried the weight of West Indies batting on his shoulders from his debut in 1930 to the outbreak of World War II, nine years later.
Copyright: Central Press/ Hulton Archive/ Getty Images.
Once more, a fast bowler topped the West Indies wicket-taking list. This time it was Manny Martindale’s 14 wickets.
1939: World War II was imminent when West Indies managed two draws in a 0-1 three-Test series defeat. England’s lone victory in the first Test at Lord’s came despite Headley’s twin centuries—he was the first to achieve the feat in a Test at the headquarters of the game.
Inevitably, he topped the batting charts with 334 runs while Learie Constantine, though well past his best at almost 38, led the wicket-takers with 11.
Four scheduled first-class matches following the final Test on 22 August were cancelled and an anxious West Indies squad set sail for home with the world slipping into its second global conflict when Adolf Hitler’s Germany invaded Poland on 1 September.
1950: West Indians of the Windrush Generation were already settling, uncomfortably, in post-World War II Britain. So there was jubilation for them amid soul-destroying racism as John Goddard’s team rallied from losing the first Test to take the next three, the first time the West Indies had won a Test and a series in England.
Frank Worrell’s series-leading 539 runs included 261 at Nottingham in a 283-run fourth-wicket partnership with fellow ‘W’, Everton Weekes (129).
Leading the bowling were those two inexperienced pals of mine (courtesy of Lord Beginner), spinners Alf Valentine (33 wickets) and Sonny Ramadhin (26).
Appropriately, the first Test win on English soil came at Lord’s and the image of the Lord Kitchener and his guitar accompanied by celebrating fellow West Indians across the hallowed turf is one of cricket’s iconic images.
1957: From songs of praise to tales of woe, seven years later, and a 3-0 thrashing for the West Indies in their first five-Test rubber in England.
Ramadhin’s threat was nullified by England’s pad play—tactics which would now earn LBW decisions—with the spinner’s haul of 14 wickets, the most for the West Indies.
He took nine of those in the first Test in Birmingham where he bowled 98 overs in the second innings, as captain Peter May and Colin Cowdrey fashioned a 411-run fourth-wicket partnership to change the tune decisively for the rest of the series.
(via Cricketnmore.)
All-rounder Collie Smith, who died tragically in a vehicular accident two years later in a car driven by teammate Garry Sobers, led the Caribbean run-scorers with 396.
1963: Inspirational captain Frank Worrell’s final Test series and confirmation of West Indies’ return to prominence with a 3-1 triumph in a series where the Wisden Trophy was at stake for the first time.
Rohan Kanhai’s 497 runs led the batting effort while Charlie Griffith’s raw pace earned him 32 wickets. Off-spinner Lance Gibbs offered solid support with 26 victims.
Kanhai’s consistency was critical to West Indies’ dominance in England in two tours in the 1960’s and his farewell assignment there as captain in 1973.
Copyright: Getty Images.
Though it ended in a draw, the Lord’s Test had a dramatic finale, Cowdrey coming to the crease with his left arm in plaster—having been struck by a Wes Hall lifter earlier in the day—to stand at the non-striker’s end as David Allen defended the final two deliveries from a rampant Hall, with West Indies needing one wicket and England six runs away from victory.
1966: Sobers, the greatest cricketer on Earth or Mars, according to the Mighty Sparrow, enhanced that status with a table-topping 722 runs at 103.14 and 20 wickets (one short of series-leader Gibbs) in captaining the West Indies to another 3-1 series triumph.
That phenomenal effort included an unbeaten 163 in a match-saving unbroken sixth-wicket partnership of 274 with cousin David Holford (105 not out) in the second Test at (where else?), Lord’s.
Copyright: PA Photos.
1969: Only three Tests this time and obvious signs of decline in the great side of the 1960’s with the West Indies sliding to a 2-0 series loss.
Workhorse seamer John Shepherd’s 12 wickets were the most for the visitors with Basil Butcher’s tally of 238 heading the batting list.
Charlie Davis’ runner-up total of 208 included 103 in the first innings at Lord’s—the first Trini Test hundred at that venue—which was probably an act of necessity after being involved in the run out of Sobers late on day one.
Davis is the first cricketer from Trinidad and Tobago to score a century at Lord’s.
Photo: PA Photos.
1973: A barren run of more than four years without a Test victory ended in style with a 2-0 domination of this three-Test series. Keith Boyce’s 19 wickets led the way and Clive Lloyd headed the batting with 318 runs.
But this was all about the Test farewells in England of Sobers and Kanhai, the pair blazing hundreds, with Trinbagonian Bernard Julien emulating Davis in very different circumstances, in West Indies’ only innings of the series finale at (need we say it?) Lord’s.
And then came the World Cup.
Photo: Lancashire Cricket.
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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.
The person next to Learie Constantine is Clifford Archibald Roach, 1904 to 1984 not Joe Clifford Roach 1937-1992 who is an American