Worrell/Simon Lister

This biography serves as an illuminating follow up to Who Only Cricket Knows.  

Frank Worrell was the first black cricketer to captain the West Indies for a full series.

A member of the three Ws triumvirate Caribbean; Clyde Walcott, who like Worrell went to Combermere school, and Everton Weekes – were the more powerful hitters, Worrell the more graceful and an all rounder.

All three were born in Barbados although early in his career Worrell moved to Jamaica.

Prior to Worrell,  the West Indies Cricket  Board of Control appointed white or light-skinned captains of wealth and privilege like Jeff Stollmeyer, John Goddard (pictured), Denis Atkinson and Gerry Alexander instead of  the 3ws who were finer cricketers.

This angered Learie Constantine, the Marxist writer C.R.L James and Jamaican politician Michael Manley.

The biography does not overlook Worrell’s flaws and frailties.

He was a womaniser, a drinker and – though not a mercenary – earned what he could out of cricket. He signed up for a tour of apartheid South Africa.

He believed less in the major four cricketing nations (Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and British Guiana – between whom there was a competitive rivalry bordering on strife) and more in the Federation rejected by Jamaica and Barbados.

Indeed cricket and the University of the West Indies, where Worrell was a warden, were the only two real unifying West Indian institutions.

Worrell’s great years as a batsman were in the late 1950s and as a captain the tours to Australia in 1960 and England in 1963.

Both tours produced remarkable Test matches. The tied Test at Brisbane and the Lords Test, in which any result was still possible off the final ball  after a ding-dong five days.

Richie Benaud did not consider Worrell a good tactician but – as a handler of his men – only Mike Brearley could rival him. Strangely enough Worrell did not get on that well with Walcott who did not attend his funeral claiming he had not been invited.

The finest testimonies to Worrell, who died tragically young of leukaemia aged 42, were the turn-out of 500,000 Aussies at Melbourne to say farewell at the end of the 1960 tour and him being awarded the distinction of being the first cricketer to have a memorial service at Westminster Abbey where the eulogy was delivered by that resplendent “High Priest of Cricket” Jim Swanton.

The book, though in the modern way critical of alleged white patrician ethos, is thorough and balanced but a  statistical appendix of Worrell’s matches and averages would have been welcome.

His batting average was 49 and as a more than useful swing bowler with 51 Test wickets, he could be classified as an all rounder.

Quite a man and cricketer .