Fierce batting his signature
West Indian cricketer
CRICKET has produced hundreds of individual heroes, memorable pairs by the score and several permutations of West Indian pacebowling quartets in the 1970s and ’80s, but only one genuine trio: the Three Ws — Frank Worrell, Everton Weekes and Clyde Walcott — who graced the game from the late 1940s to the late ’50s.
Across that decade, the dismissal of a West Indies opener did not make things easier on opposing bowlers, but considerably harder, with Worrell going in at No 3 and Weekes and Walcott still to come at four and five.
With 4455 test runs and 15 test centuries, Weekes, who died on July 1 aged 95, was the most prolific scorer of the three. At the crease, few could deny Weekes’ striking likeness to Donald Bradman: he attacked the bowling in the same way as Bradman, and with similar results, if with a slightly less spectacular (though still highly impressive) average of 58.61.
He cut, hooked and drove powerfully off either foot the fastest bowlers of his time. His rare defensive stroke was invariably played late, as though he mentally ran through every possible aggressive shot, looking until the last moment for a way of attacking the bowling before reluctantly conceding that the particular ball could only be played that way.
Playing for West Indies against Hampshire in 1950, Weekes hit 246 not out in 242 minutes, his first century coming in 95 minutes. Eleven days later, against Leicestershire, he made 200 not out, his first hundred in only 65 minutes, a performance that prompted Worrell, his partner at the wicket, to advise him not to hit the ball so hard.
In his debut test against England at home in Barbados in 1948, Weekes scored 35 and 25. After scores of 36, 20 and 36 in his next two tests, only his 141 in his single innings of the last test in Jamaica kept him in the team for his first overseas tour against India the next year, where he came into his own, hitting four consecutive centuries to create a record of five consecutive test centuries that still stands today.
In New Zealand in 195556, Weekes hit three centuries in the first three tests (in all of which the West Indies needed to bat only once), five centuries in his first five firstclass innings and six centuries out of a total of 10 firstclass innings. He was also a brilliantly versatile fielder, taking 49 catches in his 48 tests, and was a 1951 Wisden cricketer of the year.
More than anyone before or after them, other than Sir Garfield Sobers, and George Headley (who, though he played for Jamaica, had a Barbadian father), the Three Ws defined West Indies cricket.
Devastating as their impact on the batting order was, it was faint compared with their impact on the West Indian social order. They wreaked greater havoc on staid, whitedominated Barbadian and Caribbean society than on any bowling attack they faced. All three were knighted. Weekes’ relentless, forceful batting style took its toll on his body, and he retired from test cricket aged only 32, though he continued playing firstclass cricket until 1964.
He found employment and respect as a coach and commentator in Barbados, and as an international match referee, but not a great deal of money. He represented Barbados for many years in bridge. But it is indubitably for his batting that he will be remembered. — Guardian News & Media