Famous Cricketers No 94 - Alfred Lewis Valentine

From 50 searching overs, Valentine claimed 8/104 in England’s first innings of 312. In the second, he took 3/100 from 56 overs, including 22 maidens. His 11/204, however, failed to prevent the hosts from winning by 202 runs when the visitors collapsed in their second innings for 183 on a crumbling pitch. After their defeat at Manchester, the West Indies moved into a higher gear and defeated England convincingly in the three remaining Tests. Altogether they won 17 of their 31 first-class matches and lost only 3.That summer was a long sequence of successes for Ramadhin and Valentine who captured 258 wickets between them, including 59 in the four Tests. While Ramadhin led the West Indian averages in all first-class matches with 135 wickets at 14.88 apiece, Valentine snared 33 (av: 20.42) in the Tests. This remained a West Indian record in any Test series until Malcolm Marshall captured 35 wickets in five Tests against England in 1988. Val’s wonderful control was reflected in the fact that he bowled 422.3 overs, including 197 maidens, for 674 runs in his first 4 Tests. In addition to his haul of 11 wickets in the first Test, he also took 10/160 from 90.3 overs in the fourth. He had become the first West Indian bowler to take 10 wickets or more in a match on two occasions in a single series. Valentine enjoyed several glorious days in 1950. Against the MCC in May, he claimed 7/168 from 81 overs. At Lord’s, in the second Test, he returned the phenomenal analysis of 116/75/127/7. At Liverpool, in July, he embarrassed Lancashire again by taking 7/57 in their second innings. Against Leicestershire, also in July, he conceded only 141 runs from 76.4 overs while taking 7 wickets. In a losing cause, against Warwickshire in August, he captured 8/93 from 49 overs. Towards the end of the tour, he produced an amazing spell against Kent at Canterbury, capturing 5 wickets for 6 runs in just over 13 overs in the second innings. It was a truly unforgettable season for the young left-arm leg-spinner from Spanish Town. Valentine followed up this encouraging start with a successful invasion of Australia and New Zealand in the winter of 1951/52. Although the West Indies played disappointing cricket on that tour, he personally shone with 24 wickets (av: 28.79) in five Tests against Australia and 8 (av: 19.12) in two Tests against New Zealand. Before he was 22, he had thus captured 65 Test wickets at fewer than 24 runs apiece in his first 11 Tests. He had also been able to bowl very economically, restricting his opponents to just over 2 runs per over. His statistics would have looked even more impressive had his colleagues not fielded and caught so poorly in Australia. Even so, in his 10 first-class matches there, he took 53 wickets for 1,301 runs (av: 24.54) while the rest of his colleagues, including Ramadhin, were struggling. He enjoyed a particularly fruitful match against South Australia, taking 12/164 in 55.5 eight-ball overs at Adelaide in December. When India visited the Caribbean for the first time in 1952/53, Valentine was again the leading wicket-taker for the West Indies. In 5 Tests, he claimed 28 wickets for 828 runs in 430 overs, of which 178 were maidens. His tally of wickets was then a record for the West Indies against India and survived as such until Wesley Hall took 30 in 1958/59. In only 16 Tests, Valentine had already taken 93 wickets at an average of 25.22 runs each. He bowled extremely well at Georgetown (8/198 from 87.5 overs) and at Kingston (9/213 from 94.5 overs). But the featherbed pitches were generally too unresponsive to spin and neither side had bowlers penetrative enough to force decisive results. Consequently, only one match produced a positive conclusion. At Bridgetown, Barbados, where the batsmen found more difficult conditions than usual, the West Indies won by 142 runs with Ramadhin taking 7/85 from 54.5 overs and Valentine 6/111 from 76. Valentine was considerably less effective against England in the West Indies in the winter of 1953/54. He seemed to have lost much of his customary sting and was dropped after the first three Tests. Even at Bridgetown, where he and Ramadhin confined the visitors to 128 runs from a whole day’s play (in which 114 overs were bowled), he was steady rather than penetrative. His 90.5 overs cost only 148 runs but he could take no more than three wickets. The series, however, was not a total loss for 6