I
wasn’t interested in the articles or even the brief reviews of the matches; it
was all about the names, the runs, wickets and so on. No matter that it all
related to an era more than a decade before I’d been born. Perhaps that was
part of its appeal, an historical work of reference encapsulating a cricketing
summer from the mists of time when even Dad was a mere undergraduate at
Southampton University.
Besides
the County Championship (no professional one-day cricket in those days) - which
resulted in a tie between Surrey and Lancashire – there was an extensive series
of games involving the touring West Indies side played against counties, in
addition to four Test matches. As a big fan of Caribbean cricketers in my own
time, I would wonder what it would be like to witness them play, to bring back
to life the contests between the spinners Ramadhin and Valentine and England’s
Hutton, Washbrook, Compton and co.
The
name at the top of most batting tables that year was ED (Everton De Courcey)
Weekes, who this week died at the age of 95. Apart from a few flashes of
black-and-white newsreel, his performances will live only in the minds of
spectators and contemporary newspaper reports which is a shame. Dad would tell
me about the legendary Three ‘W’s, Walcott, Worrell and Weekes, who comprised a
formidable Windies middle-order as devastating as anything before or since.
Back
then, the West Indies were not a notable cricketing force. Constantine and
Headley had made names for themselves pre-war but relied on contracts with
Yorkshire and Lancashire leagues to earn a living for at least part of the
year. It was also an era when black players were not allowed to captain the
West Indies, nor could professionals lead England. Strictly for amateurs, dear
boy, think of the old school tie. When the 1950 side recovered from an early
reverse at Old Trafford to crush England 3-1, attitudes had to change and they
did.
Weekes
wasn’t a big bloke, but by all accounts a powerful right-handed stroke-maker.
The 1951 Wisden noted his four double-hundreds and a triple in that single
summer although he was less dominant in the Tests, despite averaging 56. Throughout
the 1950 tour he racked up an incredible 2,310 runs at almost 80 plus a shedload of catches.
If there could be a leading man in a reference book, ED Weekes was the undoubted
star of that Wisden.
He
set other records in his relatively short career. Nobody has bettered his run
of seven successive Test 50s, nor has anyone matched his sequence of five consecutive
centuries, which would have been extended had he not been controversially run
out for 90 when in sight of the sixth! Playing for Bacup in Lancashire he ended
the 1954 season with a batting average of 158 and more than fifty wickets to
his name. He’d probably have made a great wicketkeeper, too.
The
globalisation of professional cricket in recent years makes Weekes’ run aggregates
look rather puny but to this day only seven men have retired with a superior
Test average than his 58.61. Not Tendulkar, not Lara, not Ponting. As with Bradman,
Sobers, Richards, Lloyd and Lara, I wonder what Sir Everton, belatedly knighted
in 1995, would have achieved in the age of Twenty20.
His
prowess in the sporting arena also enabled political and social change beyond the
boundary rope, both in his native Barbados and in the wider Caribbean. He was
also not afraid to speak out against the disgusting racist regimes of Rhodesia
and South Africa in the ‘60s. Amazingly, his was a natural talent, self-taught in
poverty-stricken Saint Michael, but after retirement he would be a successful
coach, match referee and commentator, besides a resected public servant in
Barbados.
I
admit I hadn’t realised he was still alive but it’s reassuring to know that aft the time of his deathhis
name still means something in these days of million-dollar auctions, and doesn’t
simply reside in a crumbling seventy year-old Wisden volume in my attic.
