Cozier: Ramadhin a West Indies icon

VETERAN West Indian cricket journalist Tony Cozier described legendary “mystery” spinner Sonny Ramadhin as a “West Indian icon”. Cozier was delivering the feature address at the inaugural UWI/Guardian Life Sonny Ramadhin Annual Cricket Lecture at the Learning Resource Centre, UWI St Augustine campus on Friday night. Relating a few words from the book ‘Cricket Lovely Cricket’ by Vijay Kumar, Cozier said: “He (Ramadhin) always respected his teammates and the opposition. He never refused to sign an autograph and perhaps, most important of all, maintained his sense of humour. He came into the game as a simple man and left it in similar manner.

“It is an epitaph every cricketer will like to carry to the grave with him. Perhaps it should be stuck up on the walls of West Indian dressing rooms at the present moment.” The long-standing commentator also noted that his late father Jimmy “was assigned by the Caribbean Press Association to cover the tour for regional newspapers”, hence his recollection of the famed 1950 tour by the West Indies to England. Ramadhin, born in May 1 1929 in St Charles Village, South Trinidad, and raised by his relatives in Esperance Village, south of San Fernando, was selected for the 1950 West Indies team after only two seasons of territorial cricket.

A virtual unknown selectee, he was renowned for bowling with a cap and his sleeves buttoned on his wrist, as well as his ability to disguise the way he spun the ball. Forming a long-lasting partnership with tall, bespectacled Jamaican left-arm spinner Alf Valentine, the diminutive Ramadhin took 158 wickets in 43 Tests, from 1950-1961, at an average of 28.98. Cozier noted: “The West Indies arrived by boat in Southampton in April 1950 seriously under-estimated by the English press which dismissed them as no more than warm-up for the Ashes series in Australia the following year.” “The West Indies had never won in nine previous Tests on three previous tours of England,” said Cozier, “and when they were beaten in the first Test at Manchester by the decisive margin of 202 runs, there seemed little cause to doubt the media’s opinion.”

Cozier spoke on length of the 1950 series, which saw the West Indies winning by a 3-1 margin, including a memorable 326-run victory in the second Test at Lord’s, London from June 24-28; a match which saw Ramadhin return figures of 5-66 and 6-86. “At Lord’s, the West Indians had packed the stands at the Nursery End,” Cozier continued. “There were recent arrivals in the early wave of immigration from the Caribbean but the exploits of their team, defeating the English at Lord’s, the holiest of holies, were cause of typical bacchanalia celebration. “It was a time too when the movement towards gaining political independence was gaining irreversible momentum,” he added.

Ramadhin was represented at the event by Justice Ralph Narine, who revealed that the 74-year-old ‘mystery’ spinner is suffering from arthritis at his home in Oldham, Lancashire, England. When he retired from first-class cricket in 1965, he was the leading WI wicket-taker in Tests with 158 scalps. The first player of East Indian descent to play for the West Indies, he collected 758 wickets at an average of 20.24 in his first class career, which began in 1949. For his exploits on the field of play, Ramadhin was made an Honorary Member of the MCC, a life member of the Queen’s Park Cricket Club, inducted into the WITCO Sports Hall of Fame in 1985 and, from the local Government, presented with the Hummingbird Bird Medal in 1972 and the Chaconia Medal in 1995.