Famous Cricketers No 61 - Wes Hall

long. That great off-spinner, Lance Gibbs, very soon eclipsed it. Gibbs continued to play until 1976 and ended up with 309 wickets, which served for some years as a world record. Of course, in these days, when Test cricket is being played with much greater frequency, several West Indians have eclipsed Hall’s record, and three of them (Curtly Ambrose, Malcolm Marshall and Courtney Walsh) have surpassed Gibbs’s as well. During a first-class career that lasted until 1971, Hall claimed 546 wickets at an average of 26.14 runs each. He had actually been only the fifth West Indian (after S.G.Smith, Sonny Ramadhin, Sobers and Gibbs) to exceed 500 wickets in first-class cricket. Surprisingly, only 41 of his victims were claimed on behalf of Barbados. The annual Shell Shield and Red Stripe territorial competitions came too late for him. Hall represented his native island on only 13 occasions and his bowling average for that country was a modest 30.19 runs per wicket. Always somewhat superstitious, he developed a peculiar dread for the Kensington Oval where his first-class career had suffered such an inauspicious start. His first two games at Bridgetown brought him but a single wicket for 238 runs from 53 overs. Perhaps he put too much pressure on himself when performing before his home crowd. He always seemed more comfortable in Kingston and Port-of-Spain where he enjoyed much better luck. Curiously, Hall played more often for Queensland (17 matches in two seasons) than he did for Barbados and produced considerably better results there, taking 76 wickets at less than 27 runs apiece. In his first season for Queensland (1961/62) he was particularly effective, capturing 43 wickets at just over 20 runs each. This was then a new record for the state and it endured as such until 1969. Hall was one of the three West Indian tourists of 1960/61 who received invitations to participate in the local Sheffield Shield competition. He, Rohan Kanhai and Sobers did so with much distinction for a few years. Hall migrated briefly to Trinidad late in his career and could finally regard Queen’s Park Oval as his home ground, after having achieved considerable success there. He had the satisfaction of representing the republic of Trinidad & Tobago in 9 matches, from which he garnered 23 wickets at reasonable cost (27.08). He also played one match as a member of a Jamaican XI. Still, in fifteen years, his first-class career encompassed only 170 games altogether. Thus, although he seemed to have enjoyed the status of a West Indian legend for a very long time, his opportunities were relatively limited. The bulk of his first-class matches came for West Indian touring teams. He made three such visits to England, two to Australia and two to India. ‘Big Wes’ never lost his lust for batting and once jovially confided that he thought the West Indies would perform much better if only they were smart enough to promote him to a responsible position in the batting order. Only occasionally, however, did he display the kind of skills as a batsman that had earlier impressed Hughes and Noott. In that memorable trial at Queen’s Park Oval in 1957, when he batted so aggressively for 77, he showed signs of developing into a useful all-rounder. But he very seldom thereafter displayed the same level of skill, intensity or seriousness at the crease. He did, on one occasion, surprise the undergraduates as well as himself by registering 102 not out against Cambridge University at Fenner’s in May 1963. He also registered two Test fifties, including a fairly impressive one against Australia at Brisbane in December 1960. An unbeaten 50 against India in 1962 also stands to his credit. But, having decided to focus primarily on his bowling after 1957, he generally brought an air of hilarity to his batsmanship thereafter. Altogether, in 215 innings, he accumulated only 2,674 first-class runs at an average of 15.10. In 66 Test innings, he performed marginally better, scoring 818 runs and winding up with an average of 15.73. His 18 innings for Barbados yielded a better average (18.42) and included an astonishing 88 against India at Bridgetown in March 1962. Hall’s fielding, too, which tended to be more athletic in his youth, was little more than adequate in his later years. But he did register 58 catches, including 6 for Barbados and 11 in Tests for the West Indies. As a cricketer, Hall will forever be remembered as one of the fastest bowlers ever produced by the West Indies. With Charlie Griffith in the 1960s, he formed one of the most fearsome fast bowling partnerships in the history of cricket. Appropriately, an important stand at the Kensington Oval in 7