Famous Cricketers No 94 - Alfred Lewis Valentine

ALFRED LEWIS VALENTINE Alfred Lewis Valentine is another one of those Caribbean stars who subsided into undeserved oblivion after having shone with exceptional brightness in the cricket firmament for more than a decade. He was the first of all West Indian bowlers to capture 100 wickets in Test cricket, the only one to begin his Test career with a haul of 11 scalps in his first match, and the youngest of all West Indian bowlers to reach the 100-wicket plateau. In collaboration with Sonny Ramadhin, he reduced England’s best batsmen to neophytes in 1950, the summer in which he set a long-standing West Indian record of 33 wickets in a Test series. But, for all his marvellous accomplishments on the cricket field, there is a mysterious and astonishing paucity of literature on this magnificent left-arm spin bowler. Alfred Valentine was born in Kingston, Jamaica, on 29 April 1930. His parents shortly moved to Spanish Town, where he played his earliest cricket and was good enough at 12 years of age to represent his school, once taking as many as nine wickets in a single innings. Following his departure from St Catherine School, he represented Police in junior grade cricket in Spanish Town. Soon promoted to the First Division in the national competition, Valentine became one of the finest bowlers in the country by the time he was 18, thanks in large measure to the coaching he received from George Mudie, a former Jamaican left-arm spinner, and Jack Mercer, the former right-arm fast medium bowler for Glamorgan and Northamptonshire. He learnt not only how to spin the ball prodigiously but to control its line and length, to vary its flight and pace, and occasionally to alter its trajectory quite deceptively. He became a highly accomplished bowler while in his teens. Valentine was still only 19 years old when selected to play for Jamaica against Trinidad in January 1950. The Jamaicans were totally unaccustomed to the jute-matting wickets which were then prepared at the Queen’s Park Oval in Port-of-Spain and they failed miserably in the first encounter. While Andy Ganteaume (147), Jeffrey Stollmeyer (261) and Kenny Trestrail (161*) made merry at Jamaica’s expense, the visitors could not cope with the unusual bounce of the Queen’s Park strip and fell like so many nine-pins to Wilfred Ferguson and Sonny Ramadhin. Poor Valentine (0/111) toiled in vain. But whereas his team-mates were severely punished, he showed great steadiness and maturity in his 39 overs (which included 7 maidens). The second match was more evenly contested. Trinidad were restricted to 373 in their first innings, despite the gallant efforts of Gerry Gomez (99) and Trestrail (91). Valentine again bowled steadily to claim 2/79 from 39.2 overs. This was sufficient to impress Gomez in particular and the Trinidadian critics in general. Gomez, Valentine’s first victim in first-class cricket, observed that he had never seen a bowler impart so much spin to the ball. He and Stollmeyer reported that they could hear the ball actually buzzing as it approached. They therefore persuaded John Goddard, the West Indian captain, to take the youngster’s claims most seriously. They felt that Valentine’s natural ability to spin the ball would make him a dangerous bowler under English conditions. These two matches were part of the trials arranged by the West Indies Cricket Board of Control (WICBC) to help in the selection of the international side due to tour England in the summer of 1950. Thus it was that, with only two first-class matches behind him and only two first-class wickets to his credit (for 190 runs), Valentine was chosen to accompany the West Indies on their historic visit to the Mother Country. Most other national selectors would have refused to take such an enormous gamble. But the gamble paid off most handsomely indeed. The inexperienced ‘Spin Twins’, Ram & Val, set to work almost at once, leaving most of the opposing batsmen mesmerized. In the last match prior to the first Test at Old Trafford, Valentine returned the remarkable figures of 13/67 and clinched a berth in the Test XI, just in case the selectors were entertaining any doubts about his form. He vindicated their judgement by taking the first 8 wickets that fell in his début, the first bowler ever to have done so. 5