Famous Cricketers No 73 - Sonny Ramadhin

Sonny Ramadhin Like most Caribbean cricket stars, Ramadhin sprang from modest roots. His poor East Indian parents, who were really Ramdins, lived in the small rural community of St Charles Village (very close to the better known Esperance Village) in Trinidad, where Sonny was born on 1 May 1929. Orphaned from an early age, he was brought up by his grandmother. As nobody seemed to know the youngster’s forename, he was simply called ‘Sonny’. How some English journalists were able to manufacture the initials ‘K.T.’ is still a source of mystery. When very young, Ramadhin became captivated by cricket while attending the Canadian Mission School in Duncan Village. At first, he posed as a right-handed batsman but gradually came to recognize that he could spin the ball both ways with hardly any perceptible changes in grip and delivery. He was still only a teenager when he led the Palmiste Club to a second division title in its local competition. Ramadhin’s uncanny ability to bowl leg-breaks with an apparent off-break action brought him to the attention of Clarence Skinner, a Barbadian emigrant then serving as a prominent administrator with the Trinidad Leaseholds Oil Company. An alumnus of Combermere School, Clarence had himself been a keen cricketer in his youth, good enough to have gained selection for Barbados in the early 1940s. Clarence brought Ramadhin into the Leaseholds first division team when he was only 18 years old, found him a job as a storekeeper with the Company, and the rest (as the saying goes) is history. Ramadhin was so successful as a bowler for the Leaseholds team that he immediately became one of the most famous players in the island. Local batsmen were mesmerized by his puzzling action, his unerring accuracy and his shrewd variation of flight and trajectory. After only two seasons of first-division cricket, he had become an automatic choice for the Trinidad team in its two-game tournament against Jamaica at Port-of-Spain early in 1950. The Jamaicans who toured Trinidad in January/February 1950 were no less bemused than Ramadhin’s Trinidadian opposition had been. Batting first, the visitors were trundled out for 155 on what seemed a perfect batsman’s pitch. In 16 overs, Ramadhin claimed 5/39. In the second innings, Jamaica fell for 230, with Ramadhin taking 3/67 from 33.5 overs. The magnitude of his achievement is best understood when one considers that, on the same strip, Trinidad amassed 581/2 declared. The second match produced a closer contest, when Ramadhin was restricted to 4/125 from 49 overs. These fixtures were used by the West Indies Cricket Board of Control (WICBC) as trial matches to assist in the selection of the team to England in the summer of 1950. Many people believed that Ramadhin would be dangerous in English conditions, despite his inexperience. It was a very bold gamble for the selectors to take, especially since they had a fairly straightforward alternative. The wily and more experienced Trinidadian right-arm leg-spinner, Wilfred Ferguson, was available. He had established a record of 23 wickets in 4 Tests against England in the tour of 1947/48 and had just bowled extremely well against the Jamaicans, taking 9/130 in the first match while Ramadhin was claiming 8/106. On this occasion, the selectors struck gold. Not only did Ramadhin justify their faith in him, but they also chose another youngster, the Jamaican left-arm spinner, Alfred Valentine, who had just bowled with great steadiness and determination in the face of much adversity at Port-of-Spain. Both Ramadhin and Valentine, still not yet 21, were chosen for an important tour after each of them had participated in only two first-class matches. In England, the two youngsters hit their stride almost at once and made the selectors look like geniuses. In the games leading up to the Test series, Ram & Val wrought considerable havoc among the best of England’s county batsmen and enjoyed a huge psychological advantage going into their début Test at Old Trafford. That match was lost, as the West Indian batsmen failed miserably in their second innings on a strip that had degenerated rapidly. But Ram and Val enhanced their reputations by 5