Barbados? It just hit me for 6!
Tom Chesshyre gets a cricket lesson from a legend as he goes in search of his heroes of the Caribbean
I’M IN cricket nets beside a field surrounded by tropical vegetation on a muggy day in Barbados. I adjust my thigh pad, straighten the visor on my helmet, tap my bat on the crease and nervously await what is about to happen. At the other end of the nets, a tall man wearing an orange-and-green pyjama-style cricket outfit is holding up a ball ready to take aim. But rather than bowl the ball himself, he places it in a whirring machine that catapults a delivery towards me at 60-plus miles per hour.
It bounces sharply and, after shuffling sideways very slightly to cover my stumps, as I have been instructed, I step back and cut the ball into the netting with a satisfying crunch. ‘That was a four!’ exclaims Franklyn Stephenson, one of the greatest players in the West Indies never to make the Test team (more of which later).
Further balls are fired at me. Sometimes I hit them, sometimes I don’t. I’m learning to face bouncers in the region of the world that made the fiery deliveries famous.
Lovers of West Indian cricket have long flocked to the Caribbean. The flair of ‘calypso cricket’ has for decades captured the imagination of diehard fans, with names such as Learie Constantine, Garfield Sobers, Clyde Walcott, Gordon Greenidge, Desmond Haynes, Viv Richards, Clive Lloyd, Brian Lara, Michael Holding, Malcolm Marshall and Courtney Walsh lighting up so many matches over the years.
The drum roll of greats is, of course, much lengthier than this. Images of the flamboyant stroke play of the likes of Sir Garfield (as he became after breaking the world record score in a Test with 365 not out in 1958) and the terrifying pace of bowlers such as Michael Holding (nickname: ‘Whispering Death’) live long in the memory.
So how do I fit into this? Well, I’ve come to Barbados to attend the Franklyn Stephenson Cricket Academy, in a quiet corner of the parish of Saint Thomas, to see if some of the magic dust of the glory days of West Indies cricket will rub off on my own (very lowly occasional village cricket level) game.
The academy opened in 2011, offering lessons mainly to local kids during school holidays, but also entertaining teams including the West Indies first team and Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club, who have practised here during the English winter. Many top English players have popped by.
‘Stuart Broad has been here, he’s my buddy’s son,’ says Franklyn, referring to Chris Broad, the England batsman with whom he played at Nottinghamshire. ‘Joe Root [the England Test captain] has been here. He said it’s the best pitch he’s seen in the Caribbean.’
And the academy has had one particularly special visitor. ‘Sir Garfield has dropped by a few times to give the kids a pep talk,’ says Franklyn, 58. ‘He was the best player of fast bowling I have ever seen. He could see if a ball was being released at 12 o’clock in the bowler’s action. If it was, he knew it would be a yorker [a full-pitched ball]. If it was being bowled at 10.30, he know it would be a bouncer.’
Franklyn is a fount of knowledge on such technicalities – and it’s all part of what informs his first-rate coaching at the academy, which has begun offering one-off lessons to tourists visiting the island. Youngsters travelling with parents can sign up for a full week’s tuition.
During my three, one-hour, oneon-one lessons with Franklyn, I learn that it’s not OK just to step forward and prod or swing depending on the line and length. I must ‘move into a good position just before the point of delivery with your right toe between middle and off stumps’, position my left foot just inside the line of the ball, keep my head above my toes for balance, have slightly bent knees, grip lightly with my bottom hand, keep my left elbow high and play with a straight bat. That’s just the batting. When it comes to bowling, I must maintain balance by ‘not falling over in the delivery stride’, rotate my shoulders by rocking the leading shoulder up and down, and – if I’m trying to apply spin – to get the ball to pitch on a good length.
Simple. After lessons you are free to practise with the kids in front of the little clubhouse. Games of ‘tapeball’ (a tennis ball wrapped in electrical insulating tape) are played on an artificial grass pitch. Tape-ball cricket is favoured among coaches
here as the ball does not bounce too high and is not too hard, so children are not afraid of the ball from an early age.
The kids, even those aged nine or ten, are super-competitive. One boy stands out – he’s smashing us all over the place. I later learn from Franklyn that at 16 he is already captain of the Barbados under-19 team. With him and the others, it’s hard to understand how the West Indies team could have won just one of their last 11 Test series.
In a quiet moment, Franklyn explains how he became ‘quite infamous’ in Barbados for joining a ‘rebel tour’ of South Africa in the apartheid years. Because of this he was never selected for the West Indies team. Yet he is the only player, apart from Sir Richard Hadlee, to score more than 1,000 runs and take more than 100 wickets in an English county cricket season, a feat he achieved in 1988. Franklyn’s academy is at the front line of exactly what needs to be done to get West Indies cricket going again.
But what about watching a game on this beautiful island? I’m visiting during the Caribbean Premier League season, so I attend the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown for two raucous nights as the Barbados Tridents triumph against the Trinbago Knight Riders before losing to the St Kitts and Nevis Patriots. What a wonderful atmosphere, with steel drums, blasts of reggae from a sound system, Mexican waves and lots of banter in the stands. If there’s no game on, you can visit Kensington Oval for a 45-minute tour, walking out on to the hallowed turf.
Outside the ground stands a statue of the island’s greatest cricketer: Sir Garfield Sobers. Through a chance encounter and a hastily agreed game, I find myself playing a round of golf with the living legend. When I ask the 81-year-old what he thinks of the current West Indies team, he falls silent. Anything he says could be a news story sailing round the internet.
Afterwards, via a beer at Marshall’s Bar on Holders Hill (a haunt of the cricket greats), I return to my hotel for a game of cricket against fellow guests on the beach. Get into position! Left elbow up! And then I miss it altogether. Oh well, you may meet the greats, but it doesn’t mean you’ll play like them.