Farewell...

That tally was doubled in the following Test, thanks to twin hundreds at the Eden Gardens. Significantly, it was now five centuries in as many innings for Weekes, including his maiden one nearly a year ago in Kingston—a batting record that has stood the test of time. Jack Fingleton, Rahul Dravid and Alan Melville (4 each) came closest to equalling it.

In the first innings at Eden Gardens, Weekes’s 162 was 108 runs more than the next best innings (54 by Walcott), and those runs were scored in a shade over three hours. Then, in a second innings fraught with single-digit scores, Weekes and Walcott got to the three-figure mark. There is no archival footage to lend visuals to these amazing numbers. Worrell’s words though paint a vivid picture of Weekes’ shotmaking.

“Weekes is a tremendous hitter of the ball. His favourite, and perhaps most devastating, shot is the square cut. Yes, I know that he drives with immense power, and that he, too, loves to hook any ball that can be hooked, but Weekes is at his most majestic when he is square-cutting a ball,” wrote Worrell in his book, Cricket Punch. He goes on: “His timing is superb, and the power he has in his wrists is incredible. A square cut by Weekes resolves itself into a flick of those strong wrists, a flash of that bat and a chase to the boundary for the fielder.”

In the next Test in Madras (now Chennai), Weekes could well have struck his sixth consecutive hundred overall, and fifth in as many innings ever in India. But he was run out for 90. “I thought the (square-leg umpire’s) decision was a very bad one. But in the game of cricket, I suppose, the element of decisionmaking would not always depend on the right result. I don’t think there is any dishonesty attached to it,” Weekes told Wisden India a few years ago.

Still, his love affair with India carried on when the team visited the Caribbean in 1953, as Weekes smashed three more hundreds, including his new highest of 207 in Trinidad. All in all, in 10 Tests against India, Weekes averaged a ridiculous 106.78 and scored seven of his career’s 15 hundreds. Weekes said: “When one is fit, no distance is too long really.”

The batting fitness gave away on his approach into the thirties, with several ‘pulled muscles’, as he once put it, cutting short his