THEY were the Iwo most unlikely had played only two first class cricket matches. He was 19 years old and five feet four inches tall, Alfred Valentine was hardly older and no more experienced. Tall, myopic / fat-footed, he had the shell-shocked lonk of the bank clerk gone to war.
Vet in a single summer, 1950, the West Indian spir changed the face of the beginning the West Indian dominance of the game which continues today.
The change was not as sudden as the bare evidence of match results might suggest. Ram and Val had been foreshadowed by players like Learie Constantine and George Headley; they were accompanied by the Three Ws batting trio, Walcott, Weeke and Worrell, But as the crowd surged back down the Brixton Road from Kennington Oval, Ramadhin Valentine were the heroes of their calypso: "Cricket, Lovely Cricket'.
The old colonial power was finally crushed in 1963 when Frank Worrell's side swept through the country. The English finally gave up any hope of stopping them by cricketing means adopted more measures.
THE Lords pigeons are the only furred and feathered friends who still take part in cricket. Yet in 1827 there was a chullenge match between twe gentlemen of Middleses" and a man and his sheep-dog. The DOE MORO SEND OY RC bowler's side until the ball was hit and rapidly field it. Their opponents.could hardly score i And when the MOCvisited Australia in 1876-77 they found That in one match the fielding side wassepplemented by twe kangaroos.
Prior to the next West Indian tour in 1966 the England captain, Dexter, a former Tory parbamentary candidate, launched a campaian of vilification against Charhe Griffith, the most successful West Indian bowler in 1963. Griffith was an unsmiling, aggressive man on the field ol play - not at all conlontine lo white ideas of how black should behave. Dexter, backed by a large section of the press, claimed that Griffith threw rather than bowled the ball.
and bowlers game.
and scurrilous Ted athletes CHIE Georgetown, According his record-breaking highest score sumbolism is the same Wist Indian cricker and pobitic are indissoluble, but neither detracts from the other. The fear of the political purist that cricket will sap black militancy is ridiculous.
Constantine, for example, was a passionate advocare of self-govern ment. Frank Worrell's team was so popular because for the first time it was led by a black. Thelatler case alsc shows the tensions within Caribbean cricket. Worrell', appointment was only the result of a long battle which reflected the continuing gulf between crowds and administrators.
FASI bowling is the reason often given for women cricketers noi competing on equal terms with men. Yet it wis A woman who invented roundarin as opposed to underarm bowling, Christina Willes of Kents how led that way to avoid getting her arm caught in her crinolines.
Her brother John was impressed with the idea and tried to use it against the MCC at Lordsin 1822. But the umpires persistently ruled that he was bowling "no-balls"
Willes ungrily left the field.
wat of history, Hissister's invention remained.
Three of the Packer "Supertests" in Inutes WHILE! disrupted by crowd demonstrations. The bercest, at the Bourdu ground in provoked spectators crammed into the (hot uncomfortable stands all day with no cricket In Barbados the disruption Came after the crowd had spent the morning listening to news of the left-wing takcover in Grenada.
to Frank Walcott, president of the Caribbean Congress of Labour: "This regional explosion s more than a sporting discontent to be identified with an unpopular decision by an umpire or the judgement of the administration of those who control sporting events. Thisis a growing sign of social discontent in the arca Cricker watchers in the Caribbean evidently do not take the given social role of the pame for granted, yet their British counterparts seem to. For all the radical' talk of one-day cricket no-one really questions the national and county organisation of the gume The Test and Counry Cricket Board has even restricted the number of