Cricket Player

was born on 21 September 1963 in Swetes Village, Antigua, the fourth of seven children. Ambrose’s family had no background in cricket, although his mother, Hillie, was a West Indies fan. As a young man, Ambrose preferred to play football and basketball. On leaving school at age 17 he was apprenticed in his father’s trade of carpentry. At this time he grew to his great height of 6 feet, 7 inches, and was considering pursuing a basketball career in the United States. He remained in Antigua, however, and, encouraged by his mother, started playing club cricket at the relatively late age of 20.

Ambrose’s great height and raw pace soon attracted the attention of coaches, and he was selected to play for Antigua and Barbuda in 1985. He made his first-class debut for the Leeward Islands in 1986 He failed to make an impression that season and was ...

was born on 9 October 1882 in St. Thomas Parish, Jamaica, the youngest of nine children. His family’s income derived from an estate in that parish and enabled him to attend York Castle High School and Jamaica College, and subsequently study medicine in Canada (possibly at McGill, in Montreal). There, he completed some of the academic requirements to become a physician before returning to Jamaica. He then left for London in 1905, where England’s medical authorities exempted him in chemistry, physics, and practical pharmacy as a result of his Canadian credentials.

Brown began his residency at the London Hospital in September 1905; he passed his biology examination in April 1906, completing the first part of his British qualifications. With his Canadian training in anatomy and physiology recognized, he passed the second portion in 1907. Brown did not take his finals until 1911 and did not ...

was born on 21 September 1901 in Diego Martin, near Port of Spain, Trinidad. His father, Lebrun Constantine, was an overseer on a coconut estate and, according to C. L. R. James (1963), “the most loved and famous cricketer in the island” (p. 103) selected to play for the first West Indian team to tour England in 1900. His mother, Anaise Pascall, was the daughter of slaves.

Learie was intensively coached in cricket by his father from an early age and began playing amateur club cricket for Shannon, the team of the lower black middle class, which was captained by his father, when he was 15. He also attended St Ann’s Government School, Port of Spain, until he was 12; then he attended St. Anne’s Roman Catholic School and captained the cricket team there in 1916 and 1917 during which time only one game was ...

Sports critics and fans hailed Learie Nicholas Constantine as one of the best fieldsmen, hardest batsmen, and greatest bowlers in the history of cricket. This popularity assisted his later political career. He secured a position as a civil servant and later as a peer in Great Britain. He also served in Trinidad as a legislator, minister, and ambassador.

Constantine was born in Trinidad to Anaise Pascal and Lebrun Constantine, a plantation foreman and famous cricketer who played for the West Indian team in England in 1900 and 1906. Learie Constantine played cricket as a boy, but upon his father's advice did not pursue a professional sports career until he had first completed his education at the age of fifteen and gained some experience working in legal services. Finally, he joined the West Indian team and played in England in 1923 and 1928.

In 1929 Constantine ...

was born on 25 May 1874, on a cocoa plantation where his parents were workers, in Maraval, near Port of Spain, Trinidad. He also worked on a cocoa estate in his youth, and he played cricket in matches held at the Queen’s Park Savannah in Port of Spain, where he quickly established a reputation for being a good batsman. Cricket in Trinidad had not as yet taken on an organized front, although one of the most distinguished icons of the game was born on the island. George Harris, 4th Baron Harris (1851–1932), was the son of a former and well-loved governor of Trinidad. He was also the second-ever captain of an English cricket team in Trinidad. Another Trinidadian, Sir Pelham “Plum” Warner (1873–1963) was known as “the grand old man” of English cricket.

The first organized club on the island was formed in the late ...

Cricketer, politician, and broadcaster born into a middle‐class family in Trinidad. When he left school, he became a clerk in a local company, a post he held for the next ten years until 1927, the year he married Norma Cox. His father was a good cricketer and Constantine also became an excellent fielder. He played for his school and as a member of the Trinidad team in inter‐colonial matches; he was selected for the West Indies team to tour England in 1923, and again in 1928. During that tour Constantine's distinguishing moment came in the match against Middlesex in June 1928 when his skills as bowler, fielder, and scorer enabled the West Indies to defeat their opponents by three wickets. C. L. R. James wrote of him he took 100 wickets made 1 000 runs and laid claim to being the finest fieldsman ever ...

was born on 12 October 1928 on the Consuelo sugar estate in San Pedro de Macorís, in the heart of the Dominican Republic’s sugarcane-growing region. He was the son of Henry Conton, a sugar mill worker and noted cricketer, and Esther Charles, a native of the British Caribbean island of Antigua. San Pedro de Macorís has produced more Major League Baseball players per capita than any other place in the world. Chico Conton was representative of a generation of athletes who made the transition from cricket, the English sport that their forbears had played, to American baseball, which became the national sport of the Dominican Republic following the rapid expansion of US influence in the country from the late nineteenth century through the US military occupation (1916–1924).

Immigrants from the English speaking West Indian islands such as Barbados and Jamaica introduced cricket to the Dominican Republic in the ...

who represented the West Indies between 1977 and 1987, was born in Christchurch, Barbados, on 16 December 1952. His parents, Myrna Garner and Hutson King, migrated first to Canada and then to the United States when he was very young, and he was raised by his grandparents Edith and Vincent, who kept a smallholding. He attended one of the island’s leading grammar schools, the Boys Foundation School in Christchurch. Garner learned cricket on the beach with what he described as “a coconut tree bat” (Garner, 1988, p. 24), and he received coaching at school from former Barbadian Test players Everton Weekes and Wesley Hall, who recognized his exceptional talents early on. Selected for his school’s Under-15 team as a fast bowler, he went on to play for the Barbados Under-19s, and in 1975 he played his first match for the full Barbados side.

After leaving school ...

was born Lancelot Richard Gibbs on 29 September 1934 in Georgetown, Guyana, to a Barbadian mother and Guyanese father. The names and occupations of his parents are not known. He established a career as a cricketer in which he became the quintessential West Indian spin bowler against whom all others have been judged since his playing days.

He was tall, slim, even being described from time to time in true Caribbean parlance, as lanky. His dearth of body size was often misleading as he was athletic, agile, strong, and quite imposing when his captain placed the 5.5 ounces of the cricket ball in his hands. Success defined his use of that ball, whether playing for his native Guyana, Warwickshire in the English County Championship (he was contracted when only batsmen and fast bowlers were the engaged professionals), South Australia, or his beloved West Indies team.

His overriding dominance derived from ...

was born on 12 September 1937 in St. Michael, Barbados, to a teenage mother. The names and occupations of his parents are not on record. From a modest background, Hall obtained a free scholarship to Combermere School, an elite institution that has put sport at the center of its curriculum. As a schoolboy, he was a wicket-keeper batsman and received coaching from the school groundskeeper, former West Indian Test cricketer Frank King. On leaving school in 1955, Hall joined Cable and Wireless, for whose company team he began to play. It was there that he first realized his ability as a fast bowler, rapidly gaining recognition as an outstanding prospect and being included on a Barbados team that played against a touring English team in 1956. Although he made little impact in the match, Hall was selected for the West Indies squad to tour England in 1957 ...

was born on 30 May 1909 in Panama’s Canal Zone to Caribbean migrant workers. DeCourcy Headley, his Barbadian father, and Irene Roberts, his Jamaican mother, met in Panama, where, like so many other West Indians, they had journeyed in search of work during the construction of the Panama Canal.

Migration would remain an important aspect of the Headley family’s strategy for economic survival; the completion of the canal in 1914 prompted the departure of George’s father to work in Cuba. At the end of World War I, his mother decided to join DeCourcy there, but with a view toward settling finally in the United States. Seeking a more stable social environment in the interim for George to grow up in, she took him to Jamaica, where he lived with her sister-in-law in Rae Town, Kingston. George would spend the rest of his life in Jamaica.

Headley s adoptive aunt fully ...

was born Delmont Cameron St. Clair Hinds on 1 June 1880 in St. Michael, Barbados. His early years are obscure, but he came to prominence as a sportsman during the mid-1890s. At the time Barbadian cricket clubs followed a strict class and race hierarchy. The most socially exclusive was the Wanderers Club, whose membership consisted for the most part of the “plantocracy,” white colonial officials, landowners, and members of the professional class. Their great rivals were Pickwick, another racially exclusive club whose membership was not as socially prestigious as that of the Wanderers. The growing black middle class was represented by Spartan, whose members had inculcated the cultural values of British imperialism that privileged the playing of cricket as the ideal masculine activity. Spartan was just as socially exclusive as the white clubs it sought to emulate; a light skin color was deemed an essential criterion for membership.

Hinds commonly ...

was born on 16 February 1954 in Kingston Jamaica He was the last of four children born to Ralph Holding a building contractor and his wife Enid a schoolteacher Holding grew up in a period in which cricket held tremendous importance for the people of the West Indies Introduced to the region before the end of slavery the sport developed as a sphere in which colonial hegemony was reproduced as it was used to reinforce notions of British cultural and white racial superiority By the middle of the twentieth century the majority nonwhite populations had begun to challenge these ideas through their performances in the cricket sphere and the sport became a force of anticolonialism and a rising West Indian nationalism As the British West Indies moved toward independence through a political federation at the end of the 1950s the success of the West Indies cricket team also inspired ...

was born on 29 March 1905, in Kingston, Jamaica. His early life was an unhappy one, as his mother died when he was a young child and he was cared for by an aunt, who also died prematurely. Hylton was forced to leave school at age thirteen and begin work as a tailor’s assistant. Later, in 1933, he became a dock worker.

He was also, however, a promising fast bowler, selected initially, in 1926, to represent Jamaica, but soon spotted by the West Indian selectors. The English national team was due to tour the islands in 1934–1935 and Hylton was chosen for the Caribbean side On his debut in the first Test at Kensington Oval his captain Jackie Grant made the bizarre decision on a rain affected wicket to reverse the second innings batting order leaving Hylton to open the innings He made 19 and top ...

was born on 2 May 1969 in Santa Cruz, Trinidad and Tobago, the tenth of eleven children of Bunty and Pearl Lara. Lara’s father, Bunty, was a manager at the Ministry of Agriculture who also ran a junior cricket league and encouraged his son to play the game from a young age. While at Fatima College, Lara became friendly with the sons of Joey Carew, a former West Indies opening batsman, who became a cricketing mentor during his teenage years. He excelled at both cricket and soccer, representing Trinidad and Tobago at both sports at the under-14 level. At school he was a good student but turned down the opportunity to pursue further education to concentrate on a career as a professional cricketer, and in 1986 he became the captain of the West Indies youth team.

Lara made his first-class debut for Trinidad and Tobago in January 1988 and ...

was born Vivalyn Latty on 8 December 1939 in Fairburn, Clarendon Parish, Jamaica, to Zachariah and Keturah Latty, both farmers. She had three sisters and four brothers, and her love for cricket began at the early age of 6 when members of the family formed a cricket team and arranged matches against different opposition teams every Saturday on a pitch prepared on land near their house. Vivalyn Latty developed into an accomplished all-rounder, a middle-order lefthand bat and a spin bowler, who was also a great fielder in positions close to the wicket, such as slip or short-leg, playing both for Jamaica and the West Indies.

Although her playing days began at 6 Latty Scott recalls that she had already developed a keen interest in cricket when she was 4 This however did not please her mother who in keeping with the prevailing Jamaican values of the day stereotyped girls ...

was born on 31 August 1944 in Georgetown, Guyana, the eldest of six children. His father, Arthur, was a chauffeur to a local doctor, but he died when Lloyd was only 14 years old, leaving his mother, Sylvia, to raise the family alone. This came just two years after Lloyd himself had almost died after contracting tetanus in an infected cut. Although he was a good scholar, his distinctive thick spectacles were not prompted by overreading, but were required because he had been hit in the right eye with a ruler while breaking up a fight at school. After the death of his father, he gave up his schooling early to work as a clerk in the local hospital to support the family. While at school, however, he had revealed himself as an outstanding athlete and cricketer, his eyesight no impediment to his batting prowess.

Lloyd was a formidable left ...

was born on 18 April 1958 in Bridgetown, Barbados. Having lost his father, Denzil, a policeman, to accidental death when he was an infant, Marshall grew up with his mother, Eleanor Welch, a cashier, and his grandparents Oscar and Lillian Welch. Marshall married Connie Earle, his long-time companion, five weeks before his death; together, they had one son, Mali.

From early boyhood, Marshall was obsessed with the game of cricket, inspired by his fellow Barbadians and earliest icons, fast bowler Wesley Hall and all-rounder Sir Gary Sobers. Unheralded as a scholar at Parkinson’s Comprehensive School, Marshall excelled in youth cricket as wicket-keeper and batsman, attracting the attention of senior clubs. His success with Spartan, a star-studded club with many Test players, earned him a place on the West Indies youth team in 1976 While at Spartan Marshall began to change his specialty to bowling eventually blossoming into one of ...

Barbadian and English county cricketer. Marshall was born and grew up in Barbados, where he first developed his love for cricket at St Giles' Boys' School. He later described how, as a boy, he would go along to Sunday School with his Bible in one hand and a cricket ball in the other. He first played competitively at the under‐15s level at Parkinson School, and later played for the Texaco Club, for the famous local club Spartan, and for Banks' Brewery.

His appearance for Barbados against Jamaica in 1978, when he took six wickets for 77 runs, marked the beginning of nineteen years of first‐class cricket, cut short only by the illness that was to kill him at a tragically early age. He first appeared for the West Indies in their tour of India in 1978 and he was also to play for the English county side ...

was born on 25 November 1909 in Barbados’s most northerly parish, St. Lucy. His parents’ names and occupation are unknown. He was somewhat of an aberration with respect to the West Indian fast bowling tradition. The recognized tall and intimidating stature of well-respected Caribbean practitioners of the art form has been a defining quality. Martindale, however, stood a mere 5 feet, 8 inches and, though with as much pace as any of the compatriots of his or another era, tended to outwit rather than overpower his opponents.

This most durable professional cricketer played at the highest level from the age of 24 in 1933 until he was 50 years old This endurance was primarily attributed to his supreme level of physical fitness Like other notable Barbadians including Wesley Hall and Derek Sealy among others his cricketing days began at the famed Combermere School where he received his introductory lesson ...