Famous Cricketers No 90 - Roy Edwin Marshall

ROY EDWIN MARSHALL Roy Edwin Marshall was born on 25 April 1930 in St. Thomas, Barbados, on Farmers Plantation, a sugar estate which was then managed by his father, a white planter descended from Scottish emigrants. Practising from a very early age on the open plantation spaces, he developed quickly into an accomplished cricketer and was no more than twelve years old when he opened the innings for Foundation School in the BCA second division competition. Roy became an aggressive right-handed batsman, a brilliant fieldsman and a very accurate bowler of right-arm off-breaks. Although not a robust lad, he struck the ball with tremendous power. His timing, coordination, technique and temperament belied his tender years and his frail physique. Roy was such a promising young cricketer that his father encouraged some of the farm hands to bowl at him on pitches specially prepared for this purpose on the plantation. He thus learnt to play on turf, concrete and matting strips before he was ten years old. To promote his cricketing prospects, too, his father then transferred Roy from Foundation to the Lodge School, one of the great cricket nurseries of colonial Barbados. This gave the youngster a golden opportunity to participate in BCA first division matches. His success as a batsman at the Lodge led to an invitation to take part in trial games late in 1945 in preparation for a Barbados tour of Trinidad. Scores of 72 and 80 resulted in his selection to the touring party. The young Marshall was not expected to be much more than a spectator in this squad of thirteen, but he was chosen for the first match when Frank Worrell came down with influenza. Thus, at the tender age of 15, Roy made his first-class début at Port-of-Spain in January 1946. He remains the youngest player ever to have been chosen to represent Barbados. He batted at number 8 and managed only 2 but left such a positive impression with his fielding that he was asked to serve as twelfth man in the following match when Worrell had recovered. Marshall’s first-class career had thus got off to a pedestrian start but it seemed to have boosted his confidence because, almost at once, he became a much more prolific scorer for the Lodge and then for the Wanderers Cricket Club. He developed into a most unusual opening batsman, relishing the pace but aiming to remove the shine from the new ball as soon as possible. Roy played all the strokes in a classical manner but did so more violently than most and occasionally resorted to unorthodox methods to force the pace. His driving off either foot was most attractive and his pulls and cuts were beautiful to watch although they were executed with astonishing vigour for one so slim. Barbados was so very strong in batting in those days that it was enormously difficult for a teenager to earn selection to represent the island. Marshall had to compete, for example, with such fine players as Denis Atkinson, George Carew, Wilfred Farmer, John Goddard, John Lucas, O.M. Robinson, A.M. ‘Charlie’ Taylor, Clyde and Keith Walcott, Everton Weekes and Frank Worrell. He did not therefore appear for Barbados again until 1948/49 when the majority of his leading rivals were taking part in the West Indian tour of India, Pakistan and Ceylon. Against Trinidad at Bridgetown in January 1949, still only eighteen years old, he achieved his maiden first-class century, a superb 149, and shared an opening stand of 278 with the equally enterprising ‘Charlie’ Taylor. In the very next match, he batted splendidly again for scores of 110 and 57. A truly magnificent 191 then followed against British Guiana at Bridgetown in February 1950. This clinched his selection to the West Indies team which toured England so triumphantly that summer. Marshall was most unfortunate in emerging at the same time that Alan Rae and Jeffrey Stollmeyer had consolidated their hold on the opening positions for the West Indies. He could not dislodge either of them in 1950, nor did he have any greater chance of disturbing the dreaded ‘W Formation’ or replacing the brilliant Robert Christiani in the middle of the order. Thus, although he enjoyed a very successful tour of England that year, exceeding 1,000 runs and averaging almost 40 runs per innings, he failed to find a place in the Test XI. He had to wait until the tour of Australia and New Zealand in 4