Famous Cricketers No 73 - Sonny Ramadhin

sharing 15 wickets between them. Valentine claimed 11/204 from 106 overs and Ramadhin 4/167 from 81.3. All the pundits agreed that Valentine was an excellent spinner capable of bowling very long and accurate spells, but felt that Ramadhin provided the greater danger as the batsmen found him the more difficult to read. This assessment was amply borne out when England met the West Indies at Lord’s for the second Test. Ramadhin played a major role in the tourists’ historic victory, claiming 11/152 from 115 overs. Valentine took 7/127 from 116. On a pitch that offered the spinners no special advantage, the two rookies had spun the West Indies to their first triumph in a Test match on English soil. Their achievement is best placed in its proper perspective when compared with the efforts of England’s three slow bowlers, Bob Berry, Roland Jenkins and Johnnie Wardle. Berry took 0/112 from 51 overs and was permanently dismissed from Test duty, although he had bowled promisingly enough (9/116) at Old Trafford earlier in the same month. Wardle was held to 2/104 from 47 overs. The more experienced Jenkins was prepared to pay dearly for his successes and ended with 9/290 from 94.2 overs. That whole tour was one long triumphal procession for “those two little friends of mine, Ramadhin and Valentine”, whose deeds inspired the most famous of all cricket calypsos, Cricket, Lovely Cricket . Ramadhin captured 135 wickets at 14.88 runs each, while Valentine claimed 123 at 17.94 runs apiece. The most successful among the remaining tourists was Gerry Gomez with 55 wickets at 25.58. In the four Tests, Ramadhin took 26 wickets (ave 23.23) and Valentine 33 (ave 20.42). No other West Indian bowler managed more than 6. Such was the awesome power of Ramadhin’s magic at this early stage of his career that, in a single calendar year (1950), he dismissed 5 or more batsmen in an innings on no fewer than 16 occasions and 6 times captured as many as 10 wickets in a first-class match. English batsmen never quite lost their fear of Ramadhin. In 18 Tests against them, he captured 80 wickets (ave 27.51). During the 1957 tour, he again led the West Indians with 119 wickets (ave 13.98), leaving even Valentine, second with 60 wickets at 19.66 each, very far behind. Even on the friendly batting strips then produced in the Caribbean, Ramadhin took 23 Test wickets (ave 24.30) during the tour of 1953/54 and 17 (ave 28.88) in 1959/60. In 1957, too, he might have established his total mastery over them in the Tests as well had it not been for the unusual strategy adopted by Colin Cowdrey and Peter May in their record-breaking fourth wicket stand at Birmingham in the First Test. Facing a deficit of 288, they came together at 113/3 in England’s second innings. Ramadhin had just taken two more wickets cheaply after returning the exceptional analysis of 31-16-49-7 in the first innings. As he had done so often in the past, he was now obviously defeating England almost single-handed. Many critics point to this historic partnership as the turning-point of Ramadhin’s career. May and Cowdrey proceeded to add 411 runs together without ever really having solved the Riddle of Ramadhin. They simply decided to anticipate his leg-break by playing as far forward as they could, allowing the off-break (if they were wrong) to strike their pads with impunity, given the lbw law as it then existed. Poor Ramadhin bowled his heart out, and appealed his lungs out, in vain. He toiled for 98 overs to take 2/179 in that innings. His 588 balls in a single first-class innings has remained a world record. His 774 deliveries for a Test match has done likewise. Overworked once more, Ramadhin never bowled as effectively again. Totally discouraged by the excessive use of the batsmen’s pads and the timidity of the umpires who did not dare to penalize them, he lost his venom and ended that Test series with 14 wickets at an average cost of 39.07 runs each. But the ruthless use of the pads, in clear violation of the spirit of the game, compelled the authorities to revisit the old-fashioned lbw law. Cowdrey and May might not have escaped so lightly had the present regulations been in place. 6