An Innings of Substance

The passing of an exceptional cricketer allows us to reflect on their career as a player, but also, being that cricket is played against a historical backdrop, it permits an opportunity to assess the social circumstances in which they played sport.

Clyde Leopold Walcott was more than a mere cricketer - he spent most of his eighty years as a figurehead for the West Indies side. Walcott could do it all - he kept wicket for his first fifteen Tests, excelled with the bat, and claimed eleven Test wickets as a fast-medium change bowler. He was the first to score five centuries in a single Test series (1955 v Australia), and in an international career that spanned 12 years he averaged an impressive 56.68.

He will always be remembered as one of the ‘three W’s’ - the other two being Everton Weekes and Frank Worrell – who were born within a short distance of each other in Bridgetown, Barbados in a period of 18 months from August 1924 to January 1926. This remarkable triumvirate all made their Test cricket debut against England in 1948, and for the next ten years dominated West Indies batting.

Despite obvious leadership qualities, the West Indies captaincy remained the preserve of the white elite, and the best that Walcott achieved was the vice-captaincy in 1957.

After he finished playing he became coach, manager, administrator, president of the West Indies Cricket Board, and the first black man to chair the ICC.

His ascension replicated that of African-descendents in the Caribbean. The West Indies side was becoming increasingly democratised as a consequence of the anti-colonial movement’s inevitable progression to independence. Worrell would finally secure the captaincy of a black cricket team in 1960.

The Guyana team was traditionally recruited from among the Georgetown Cricket Club, which was the exclusive preserve of whites. Employed to coach players on the sugar plantations, Walcott helped unearth and groom players such as Rohan Kanhai, Basil Butcher and Joe Solomon. Joined by Roy Fredericks and Lance Gibbs, the Guyana cricket team advanced in unison with wider political developments.

If a consequence of race, Walcott was also a product of the nature of the class balances in the Caribbean. He was born into the black middle class, and like Worrell received an elite education. Many privileged educated blacks saw themselves as standing next in the line of the colonial pecking order.

His bourgeois background allowed him to excel in business, as the elected president of the Barbados Employers’ Federation (1978-81) and chief personnel officer and director of the Barbados Shipping and Trading Co Ltd (1980-91).

But as the Caribbean started on its bourgeois path the spectre of race was never far away, and the cricket team used this to carve their own defiant style of play. West Indian success during the 1970s and 1980s, when Walcott was selector and manager, was unprecedented.

It is a misfortune that the man who managed the West Indies to World Cup victories in 1975 and 1979 would not see the Caribbean hosting the tournament in 2007. He must have despaired at the decline of the team to which he gave so much, though he maintained a diplomatic public silence on the calamity. As the commentator Tony Cozier concluded in his obituary, his legacy deserved better.