Maurice Foster… a jewelled table
Last week we reported on Maurice Foster’s exploits as a young table tennis player as well as his early first-class cricket career. Today, in the final of this two-part series, Foster’s Test cricket career is explored as well as his reflections on his playing days and advice he offers to young cricketers.
CENTURIES in 1969 — 122 at Kensington Oval against Barbados, and 135 at Sabina Park against the Guyana — meant Foster had booked his place in the West Indies team for the three-test tour of England in June and July.
The home team won the series 2-0, but for Foster it was a forgettable tour. He made four, and three, in the first Test batting at number seven, as West Indies, led by Sobers but with a number of new faces, lost by 10 wickets.
Foster was promptly dropped, missing the remaining two Tests. For him, that experience was the kernel of a thought that grew and took root over time. He developed the strong impression that regional selection policy was one he “should be wary of”.
Says he: “Jamaicans never seemed to get selected easily but they got dropped easily.”
But he was also bitterly disappointed with his own performance on that England tour in 1969.
“I had one good score… against [English County side] Somerset,” he recalled. Foster says he was offered a professional contract by Somerset but declined.
“I turned it down because I had a good job at Berger Paints and the money that was being offered couldn’t really support my family,” said Foster, then newly married and a young father.
Later, he got an offer from another English County, Kent, but again declined for similar reasons.
The 1970 Caribbean regional season was modest at best for Foster. A second-innings 79, opening the innings against the Combined Islands in Castries, St Lucia, was his top score.
A high point was his always valuable off-spin bowling, claiming five for 76 against Trinidad and Tobago, albeit in a losing cause on a typically spin-friendly Queen’s Park Oval pitch.
Foster’s off-spin was sometimes ridiculed as
“non-turning”, but as he is quick to point out, therein was its deceptive value.
As explained by him, he relied heavily on over spin — twirling the ball over the top of the fingers — rather than side spin. That meant the ball would often run on straight towards the batsman rather than deviating as the typical off-break would.
Right-hand batsmen playing for turn ran the risk of edging to wicketkeeper and slip. Lefthanders, on the other hand, were at risk of being bowled between bat and pad.
In 112 first-class games, Foster captured 132 wickets.
Usually asked to bowl to defensive fields at the highest level, he took nine wickets in his 14 Tests.
In July/august of 1970, Foster was among senior players in a development tour of England led by Mcmorris. Talented young stroke-makers Lawrence Rowe, Sam Morgan, Anthony Campbell and opener/wicketkeeper Desmond Lewis, were part of that squad which played four games against county teams.
For Foster, the highlight was 110 against Sussex at Hove as Jamaica won by an innings and 88 runs.
The following year, 1971, Foster had a dream start to the regional domestic season with 146 and 56 run-out, batting at four against Trinidad and Tobago in late January. That triggered thoughts he would be in the West Indies team for the first Test at Sabina against touring India the following month.
But in his only innings for Jamaica in a drawn four-day warm-up against the visitors, Foster was again run-out for zero. The run-out was a mode of dismissal which dogged Foster throughout his career.
He had to wait until the last two tests of that ’71 Indian tour, which the home team lost 0-1, before making the playing 11.
In the drawn fourth Test at Kensington Oval he was unbeaten twice for 36 and 24, batting at number seven.
Then came what Foster considers to be his best innings, before dramatically falling for a first-innings 99 in the fifth Test at Port-of-spain. The drawn game, which will be forever remembered for Sunil Gavaskar’s century and double century in his début Test series, ensured India’s first-ever Test series victory against the West Indies.
Batting like a dream at spin-friendly Queen’s Park, Foster had already dealt with the threat of vaunted Indian spin trio Erapalli Prasanna, Bishen Singh Bedi, and Sri Venkataraghavan, when disaster struck with him on the brink of glory.
His mind on a single to third man in order to get to three figures, Foster was cramped for room as he attempted to late cut a delivery from the medium pacer, Abid Ali. He miscued completely, under-edging the ball on to his stumps.