In Daren Ganga’s interview in the previous blog post, he mentioned how he found out that he had been selected to play for the West Indies. So I decided to ask a few players – past and present at the time – how they found out they had got selected to play for the West Indies cricket team. Hope you enjoy reading!
Tue, Jul 8, ’03 by MICHELLE MCDONALD
Selection to the West Indies team is a special occasion for any player.
During the recently concluded Test match at Sabina Park, CaribbeanCricket.com’s roving reporter Michelle McDonald spoke with both past players and current cricketers including Fidel Edwards and Jerome Taylor, about the moment they found out they were selected to represent the region in the Test arena.
ALLAN RAE:
Allan Rae played 15 tests from 1948 to 1953, scoring 1,016 runs with four centuries.
“I got a letter from the secretary of the Jamaica Cricket Board, who happened to be my mother’s cousin and he knew me therefore from when I was a child this high. But he wrote me right away when I was first picked for Jamaica and then for West Indies. That was 1948 to India. They always wrote. I don’t remember the excitement but I would have shared the news with my lifelong friend, now deceased, F J Cameron. Our fathers both played for Jamaica.”
EASTON McMORRIS:
McMorris played for the West Indies from 1958 to 1966. In his 13 tests he scored 564 runs.
“I was in the squad that assembled in Barbados for the 1st test match against Pakistan in 1958, the same year as Jackie [Hendricks] but not the same tour. I didn’t play in the first Test and when we got to Trinidad I was named in the next test team. I don’t remember the incident but I know I was in the squad.”
On being asked how he heard the news, McMorris, sporting more than a few grey hairs said “don’t have a clue. I don’t remember how. I probably saw it in the papers. In those days you saw things in the papers. Nobody from the Board really got in touch with you.”
‘JACKIE’ HENDRICKS:
John L Hendricks, more commonly known as ‘Jackie’, had his last test in 1969 against England at Old Trafford. Widely considered one of the best ‘keepers West Indies has ever had, with 41 catches and 5 stumpings, Hendricks had this to say:
“It was 1 April 1958. I read it in the newspaper and I thought it was an April fool. It was the team to go to India and it came out I think in the Daily Express as it was in those days. So I called Mr Johnny Groves, a selector, and asked him if there was any truth in this thing and he said yes. So I said ‘you’re kidding me are you?’ He said no.
So that’s how I heard. I was watching tennis in fact, at the St Andrew Club and I saw this afternoon paper and it had the people to go to India.” According to Hendricks, “I didn’t call a soul” to share the news.
WAYNE DANIEL:
“Where was I, where was I?” asked Wayne Daniel, a useful bowler who saw limited action because of the abundance of great fast bowlers around at the time he debuted for the West Indies in 1976. Then he recalled:
“It was 1976 and that would have been January or February 1976. The tour was against India and it was the last match of that tour, they played here in Jamaica. But I think I had heard before that because I had gone down to Port of Spain for the test match in Port of Spain that we lost heavily when we gave India 408 runs to win. So I was in Port of Spain for that match. I didn’t play, I was watching and then I came up to Jamaica for the last game.”
Still unable to remember exactly what he was doing or where he was when he heard, Daniel believes he would have been at home listening to music. For him, the news was relayed by telephone though, not in writing. “It was so many years ago, but I was certainly happy, certainly thrilled. I told my mother ‘Mum, I’m selected on the team”. He also told his older sister that he was selected and was going to have to travel.
COLIN CROFT:
Fearsome fast bowler Colin Croft whose best figures of 9/95 happened in only his second test match, was also around in the era of the great fast bowlers.
“My goal in 1977 was just to play for the President’s XI because with Holding, Daniel, Roberts and Holder coming from England in 1976, there was no chance for me to play but at least I’d play for the President’s XI”. The powers that be read his thoughts. “I played one game for Guyana, then, in 1977 in my second game against the Combined Islands in Monsterrat, I bowled fast. Got 4 for 85 – I remember that. Jim Allen got 150 then we were picked for the President’s XI. I know that I heard that in a bus going from Georgetown to Mahaica where I lived with my mother”. This bus ride was after leaving work as an Air Traffic Controller. Croft remembers one of his bosses telling him that he would never be good enough to play cricket at the highest level. How wrong this pace bowler proved him to be.
Croft recalled getting “9 wickets in the game, I think it was 5 and 4, and after that I remember Clive Lloyd saying ‘look guys, you don’t have to go home so you’re going back to Barbados and play the test match.’
Croft’s career ended with him taking 125 wickets in 27 tests from 1977 – 1982. So impressive was his debut, that 33 of those scalps was in the 5-match series against Pakistan.
JEROME TAYLOR:
The telephone is still the method of choice to deliver the good news these days. Sometimes though, it is not the player who receives the call.
Jerome Taylor was at the Shell Cricket Academy in Grenada and the memory is fresh in his mind, having only been selected just recently for the 3rd ODI against Sri Lanka in St Vincent. “I was at the Academy. It wasn’t me who got the call, it was the coach [Roger Harper]”.
Taylor should have been at a class but sheepishly admitted that “I was a bit late for the class, but just in time to get the good news that the West Indies selectors selected me for the One Day against Sri Lanka”. Was this announced in front of the whole class? “No, he [Harper] called me outside and told me that I got selected to go and represent the Caribbean”.
Did he jump up and down? Did he scream? Cool Taylor said “not really because, it was a bit surprising, yes, but I was working towards it but I didn’t know it would come that early”. Taylor went into the classroom quietly but couldn’t hide how he was feeling even though “I spent about 3 minutes outside just to get the smile off. Eventually I just couldn’t hide it. Everybody saw me smiling and I went over to my group and delivered the news to my fellow Jamaicans – Danza Hyatt and Shawn Findlay”. Harper then told all the young cricketers who were very happy for Taylor, still only 18 years old at the time.
A call to his St Elizabeth Technical coach Junior Bennett was next on his list but not before he had to pack and get on a plane that night to St Vincent. After some flight delays Taylor arrived at his hotel around midnight. Bennett had already heard it on the news and was extremely happy for him, so were his parents who also had already found out. More congratulatory wishes were in store for him the next morning from his new team mates, in particular the Jamaican crew.
“Chris Gayle, Wavell Hinds, Marlon Samuels and a few more of the guys were congratulating me and I think that was a very good thing. I think that started on a positive. They made me feel welcomed so I wasn’t under pressure”. We know what happened in that match. Two wickets in 10 overs for 39 runs thereby propelling him to the Test team and earning him the praise of captain Brian Lara who described him as “special”. The new kid was out of the starting blocks.
FIDEL EDWARDS:
Close behind Taylor was a relatively unknown fast bowler Fidel Edwards. ‘Castro’, as he is now referred to by his team mates, got a call from the Barbados Cricket Association around 10:30am one morning. “I jumped up in the air and just hollered. I wasn’t really expecting the call. It came as a shock to me”. When he came back down to earth, Edwards first called his brother Pedro Collins who has also played for the West Indies. “I just told him ‘I in the squad’ and he told me I just had to just keep on working”. His mother was next to be told. Then he had to pack and pick up his ticket at the airport.
Before Fidel Edwards was selected to play for the West Indies, many people had not heard of Gays in Boscobel situated in northern Barbados. To the question about him putting his hometown on the map, the soft spoken Edwards replied “yes, you could say so”. What’s his ultimate target? “I want to break records”.
Courtney Walsh had better watch out for Edwards has probably already broken a record for the shortest apprentice period before stepping up to the big league. For that, he has the selectors and the risk taking Lara to thank.