Nass­er Khan

"Crick­et all-rounder, leader, ed­u­ca­tor, coun­sel­lor, sen­a­tor, au­thor, hu­man­i­tar­i­an, a man of class...the West In­dies first black cap­tain. The year 2010 marks the 50th an­niver­sary of this sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone." At the age of 36, be­lat­ed­ly in 1960, when he was fi­nal­ly anoint­ed as the West In­dies crick­et cap­tain, af­ter much lob­by­ing es­pe­cial­ly from CLR James, Bar­ba­di­an born Frankie Wor­rell was al­ready past his crick­et­ing prime hav­ing risen to one of the world's best and most loved crick­eters.

That he was to cap­tain the West In­dies for just 15 Tests un­til his last in 1963 (he had al­ready played in 39) did not min­imise the lega­cy of one of the Caribbean's out­stand­ing icons. Vol­umes have been doc­u­ment­ed on his crick­et­ing sta­tis­tics as well as the num­ber of oth­er spheres in which he left his in­deli­ble marks as crick­et all-rounder, leader, ed­u­ca­tor, coun­sel­lor, sen­a­tor (Ja­maica), au­thor, hu­man­i­tar­i­an...the West In­dies first black cap­tain. This year marks the 50th an­niver­sary of this sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone.

As fate would have it in his first Test match as cap­tain, he led the West In­dies in what is the most thrilling of Test match­es that end­ed in the first ever tied Test at Bris­bane, Aus­tralia in De­cem­ber 1960 be­fore huge crowds of ador­ing fans. The pop­u­lar­i­ty they had gained un­der Wor­rell's lead­er­ship saw es­ti­mates of up­wards of a quar­ter of a mil­lion Aus­tralians lin­ing the streets of Mel­bourne to bid them farewell at the end of the Test se­ries nev­er be­fore or since heard of.

His me­te­oric rise as a 17-year-old Comber­mere High school left arm or­tho­dox spin­ner bat­ting at num­ber 11, to one of the world's classi­est bats­men ever, is tru­ly re­mark­able. By age 18 he was plun­der­ing the likes of T&T's Pri­or Jones, Lance Pierre and Ger­ry Gomez for 188 and 68 at the Queen's Park Oval, signs of great­ness to fol­low. Not con­tent with hav­ing tak­en T&T bowlers to task, he again stamped his au­thor­i­ty on them the fol­low­ing year at age 19 in 1944, at Kens­ing­ton with a mam­moth record 308 not out, T&T us­ing ten bowlers in their vain ef­forts to dis­lodge him (in­clud­ing Pierre, Jones, Gomez, Stollmey­er, Tre­strail, Pouchet, Sealy, and Tang Choon).

He fol­lowed up in 1945, back at the Queen's Park Oval, in two games with scores of 74, 61 and 113. As if to em­pha­sise his like­ness for Tri­ni bowl­ing, yet again at the Queen's Park Oval, he and Clyde Wal­cott lit­er­al­ly mas­sa­cred the T&T bowlers in an un­bro­ken stand of 574, with Wor­rell scor­ing 255 not out and Wal­cott 314 not out. He is the on­ly play­er list­ed in Wis­den 2007 to be in­volved in two 500+ First Class part­ner­ships the oth­er be­ing 502 with John God­dard.

A tes­ta­ment to his sta­bil­is­ing in­flu­ence when at the wick­et is the fact that he starred in some 20 100+ part­ner­ships at the Test lev­el alone. Two of these were over 300, one of 399 with Garfield Sobers, the oth­er 338 with Weekes, the lat­ter at the Queen's Park Oval against Eng­land. Some of his big Test hun­dreds in­clud­ed 261, 191 not out, 197 not out against Eng­land and 237 ver­sus In­dia while some of his re­gion­al hun­dreds in­clud­ed 188, 308 and 255, all against T&T. For the Com­mon­wealth XI he had some big tons as well no­tably 223 not out, 161, 165 and 143 against In­dia.

In 1948 at the Queen's Park Oval he played in his first of 51 Test match­es for the West In­dies ver­sus Eng­land where, bat­ting at num­ber four, scored 97 and 28 not out. By 1951 he was Wis­den's Crick­eter of the Year. In his 51-match Test ca­reer he had best bowl­ing fig­ures of 6-38 (vs Aust) and 7-70 (vs Eng) and tal­lied 3,860 runs with an av­er­age of 49.48 in­clud­ing 9 hun­dreds and 22 fifties and held 43 catch­es. From his first Test in 1948 to his last in 1963 he played along­side and even­tu­al­ly cap­tained many of the greats of West In­di­an crick­et. In 1962 at home, his team van­quished the vis­it­ing In­di­ans 5-0 with the skip­per him­self top­ping the bat­ting av­er­ages with 88.

His bat­ting was best de­scribed as strong of wrist, quick of foot, not typ­i­cal­ly West In­di­an, with the ca­pac­i­ty to guide or wave the ball away rather than blast it...re­flec­tive of his non-vi­o­lent na­ture one might say. Once ap­point­ed as cap­tain, he end­ed the cliques and ri­val­ries be­tween the play­ers of var­i­ous is­lands to weld to­geth­er a team which in the space of five years be­came world cham­pi­ons. He was a man of true po­lit­i­cal sense and feel­ing, a fed­er­al­ist who sure­ly would have made even greater con­tri­bu­tions to the his­to­ry of the West In­dies had he not died so ear­ly.

He re­tired from Test Crick­et af­ter the vic­to­ri­ous (3-1) West In­dies-Eng­land se­ries in 1963 pass­ing the cap­tain­cy on to Garfield Sobers.

When he left pro­fes­sion­al crick­et he served in var­i­ous po­si­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, at the St Au­gus­tine and Mona cam­pus­es where he served in var­i­ous ca­pac­i­ties of Hall War­den, Dean of Stud­ies, Di­rec­tor of Sports and Rec­tor al­so be­com­ing a sen­a­tor in the Ja­maican par­lia­ment un­der Bus­ta­mante.

Sad­ly he died pre­ma­ture­ly in 1967 at the age of 42, a month af­ter re­turn­ing to Ja­maica from In­dia and was buried on the cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (Cave Hill, Bar­ba­dos). His death re­ver­ber­at­ed around the world as trib­utes poured in for a man who is for­ev­er linked to the tri­umvi­rate of the leg­endary Bar­ba­di­an Three Ws, along with Ever­ton Weekes and Clyde Wal­cott. Wor­rell man­aged the West In­dies dur­ing the 1964-65 vis­it by Aus­tralia, and ac­com­pa­nied the team to In­dia in the win­ter of 1966-67. It was while in In­dia that he was di­ag­nosed with leukaemia.

Wor­rell re­gard­ed crick­et as the most pow­er­ful uni­fy­ing force in the West In­dies and is con­sid­ered one of the most in­flu­en­tial and great­est West In­di­ans of the 20th cen­tu­ry, who like Sir Learie Con­stan­tine be­fore him, was in­stru­men­tal in in­ject­ing pos­i­tive char­ac­ter­is­tics in­to the West In­dies crick­et team. One might say that he pos­sessed Oba­ma-like qual­i­ties of charm, con­fi­dence and diplo­ma­cy or vice ver­sa. He was al­so de­scribed as a cre­ative cat­a­lyst and bridge builder in hu­man re­la­tion­ships.

As a tes­ta­ment to his im­pact be­yond the bound­aries of the West In­dies, there is an an­nu­al Sir Frank Wor­rell day in In­dia where peo­ple do­nate blood. And to think that he nev­er played a Test match in In­dia (he did how­ev­er tour In­dia with three Com­mon­wealth teams). He was the first to do­nate blood in the suc­cess­ful ef­forts to save the life of In­di­an bats­man Nari Con­trac­tor who was struck by a nasty blow in the head by West In­di­an fast bowler Char­lie Grif­fith in 1962 in Bar­ba­dos. In In­dia, too, dur­ing a lec­ture tour to uni­ver­si­ties he was con­ferred with an hon­orary Doc­tor­ate of Law de­gree by Pun­jab Uni­ver­si­ty.

Yet an­oth­er tes­ti­mo­ny to his 'great­ness' was that up­on his death, he was paid trib­ute to in a memo­r­i­al ser­vice at West­min­ster Abbey in Eng­land, the on­ly time it was ever done so for a sports­man. Flags flew at half mast in Rad­cliffe, Lan­cashire and in Ja­maica and Bar­ba­dos. As a trib­ute to him the West In­dies and Aus­tralia com­pete for the Frank Wor­rell Tro­phy. He is an in­ductee in the US Black Ath­letes Hall of fame in Con­necti­cut. He be­came a pop­u­lar pro­fes­sion­al in the Lan­cashire league and there is a street in Rad­cliffe named in his ho­n­our.

His pho­to adorns a Bar­ba­di­an $5 note and postage stamps. There are the Sir Frank Wor­rell grounds at the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus of UWI Trinidad, Frank Wor­rell UWI schol­ar­ship fund, Frank Wor­rell memo­r­i­al gar­dens around his bur­ial site, the 3 Ws pavil­ion at Kens­ing­ton Oval. A num­ber of Frank Wor­rell mo­men­tos are lodged at Lord's mu­se­um. He is an ICC hall of fame in­ductee and there is a sculp­ture of him at the fa­mous Madame Tou­s­sauds Wax mu­se­um in Lon­don. He was one of five great West In­di­an crick­eters of all time as se­lect­ed in 2004 to com­mem­o­rate 75 years of Test as a re­gion­al team (oth­er four were George Headley, Garfield Sobers, Viv Richards and Bri­an Lara). In 1964 he was knight­ed for his con­tri­bu­tion to crick­et.

He per­formed one last ser­vice to the re­gion, man­ag­ing the West In­di­ans in their crush­ing home-se­ries de­feat of Aus­tralia in 1965. The Frank Wor­rell Hall at the Uni­ver­si­ty of West In­dies, Bar­ba­dos, is named af­ter him as well as the Sir Frank Wor­rell Crick­et De­vel­op­ment Cen­tre and Crick­et ground in Trinidad. A mem­o­ra­tive plaque at his boy­hood home was un­veiled by the Bar­ba­dos PM in 1991 and in 2007 the home was torn down to make way for a mu­se­um in his ho­n­our.

More In­fo

Frank Mor­timer Maglinne Wor­rell

Born-Au­gust 1, 1924, Bank Hall, St Michael, Bar­ba­dos

Died-March 13, 1967, Mona, Kingston, Ja­maica (aged 42 years 224 days) Ma­jor teams-West In­dies, Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, Com­mon­wealth XI, Rad­cliffe

Bat­ting style-Right-hand bat

Bowl­ing style-Left-arm fast-medi­um, Left-arm slow or­tho­dox

Test de­but: WI v Eng­land at Port of Spain, Feb 11-16, 1948