LIves in Cricket No 31 - Walter Robins

111 Tour Manager and Law 26 England reached a very creditable 482 before the West Indies proceeded to take over three days and 239 overs to grind out 563 runs, thanks to a stand of 399 between Sobers (226) and Worrell (197), and the game dragged on to a disappointing draw. Robbie would like to have seen the West Indies try to make a more positive attempt to secure a result for the Bridgetown crowd which Jim Swanton heard him describe as ‘the most knowledgeable, the most appreciative, and the most sporting he has ever come across’. Now it was time to move on to Trinidad and two games before the Second Test at Port of Spain. Thanks to some imaginative declarations MCC beat Trinidad in two matches, and Robbie was becoming more involved in the pre-match preparations. Swanton reported that ‘MCC have been putting in practice of a rather more whole-hearted character than was the rule in Australia and South Africa, with Walter Robins helping in the nets, in conjunction with the captain.’ In front of a crowd of about 30,000 spectators, the biggest in West Indian history to attend a sporting event, the West Indies began their first innings on the third day of the Second Test 360 runs behind England with all ten wickets intact. When play resumed after the tea interval they had struggled to 98 for seven when Ramadhin called Charran Singh for a sharp single to cover and the return from Dexter went straight to the top of the stumps leaving Singh a yard short of his crease and immediately given out by the umpire. The decision was received with a roar of protest, then boos, and then a rain of bottles, beer cans and other refuse was thrown onto the field of play. May called his fielders close to the boundary back into the middle, but then hundreds of spectators spilled onto the ground and the situation had descended into a riot, so that he had to lead his players back to the pavilion flanked by a police escort. The Governor of Trinidad and Tobago, the Prime Minister, the president of the West Indies Cricket Board, and the legendary ex-player Learie Constantine, now a minister in the island government, all went out to try to calm the crowd without success and the ground had to be cleared by mounted police and other reinforcements. An announcement was made over the public address system that play was abandoned for the day and the players were taken back to the Queen’s Park Hotel. At the hotel that evening, Robbie, wearing the chocolate and pale-blue striped tie of the Queen’s Park Club as a demonstration of solidarity, read out a statement: It has come to my notice that rumours are being circulated that MCC intend to discontinue the Test match and go back to England. Such a suggestion never entered any of our minds at all. We intend to go on with the game. Our sympathies are entirely with the good people of Trinidad who have been let down by a few hooligans. Later that night on Radio Trinidad, the Prime Minister, Dr Eric Williams read out the contents of a telegram he had sent to the MCC president in London apologising for the disruption of the Second Test. He went on to say: ‘I understand that tomorrow the decision will be taken as to the future of this match. I can only express the hope, and I have reason to believe, that the decision will be in favour of continuation.’ Alarmed by the