“We want Ra­mad­hin on the ball, bring him on the ball and all them wick­ets will fall.”–King Ra­dio

Son­ny Ra­mad­hin’s pass­ing is not mere­ly about the death of a great spin bowler, he is the last rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the 1950 team to Eng­land. That is the team that marked the ar­rival of West In­di­an crick­et on the stage, equal to Eng­land and Aus­tralia. Recog­ni­tion and re­spect for us as be­ing ful­ly hu­man, sure­ly on the field of sport, fol­lowed.

Learie Con­stan­tine and George Headley in the 1920s-1930s sig­nalled the in­di­vid­ual bril­liance of West In­di­ans in bat­ting, bowl­ing and field­ing.

The 1950 team in­clu­sive of Ra­mad­hin and Valen­tine, Wor­rell, Wal­cott, Weeks, Chris­tiani, Stollmey­er, God­dard (cap­tain) and oth­ers lift­ed West In­di­an crick­et to a per­ma­nent place amongst the ma­jor crick­et­ing na­tions of the world.

There­after, the West In­dies be­came in­te­gral to the sched­ule of Eng­land and Aus­tralia.

The 1950 tri­umph against “mas­sa”–the rul­ing planter class and on Eng­lish crick­et greens was the fore­run­ner to West In­di­an crick­et reach­ing an apogee. The “Be­yond the Bound­ary” emer­gence from that 1950 team ac­count­ed for the first states­man of West In­dies crick­et, and unar­guably amongst the great­est of West In­di­an lead­ers on and off the field–Frank M M Wor­rell–the first black man to have been ap­point­ed ful­ly as cap­tain of a West In­di­an team.

Such a phe­nom­e­nal hap­pen­ing took place in a West In­di­an so­ci­ety still gov­erned by race and class con­sid­er­a­tions; to send a black man as cap­tain first to Aus­tralia, which at the time still had laws that iso­lat­ed non-whites to the mar­gins, and then the coup de grace, have a black man lead the West In­di­ans on­to the Eng­lish fields and to meet the British Queen, were oc­cur­rences which went com­plete­ly against the colo­nial sta­tus quo.

When Test crick­et fell in­to the dol­drums in the late 1950s, sad­dened by a pedes­tri­an world (James) Wor­rell, a se­nior play­er in the 1950 team, with his Aus­tralian coun­ter­part, Richie Be­naud, re­mod­elled and re­vived the old game. The West In­di­an vic­to­ries in Eng­land in 1963 and against Aus­tralia (1965) marked the cul­mi­na­tion of the sweep from 1950 to us be­com­ing the undis­put­ed world cham­pi­ons: “Aus­tralia, yuh loss de West In­dies is boss, de tro­phy be­longs to us,” King Spar­row boast­ed about West In­di­an su­prema­cy.

Back to Ra­mad­hin, the un­cel­e­brat­ed 20 year old from the sug­ar cane fields of Trinidad (dis­cov­ered by Bar­ba­di­an for­mer in­ter-colo­nial play­er Clarence Skin­ner–Stollmey­er–and his 20-year-old spin twin, Al­fred Valen­tine, hum­bled the great Eng­lish bats­men of the time: Hut­ton, Wash­brook, Edrich, Yard­ley and oth­ers; so be­mused were they, that they em­ployed the then le­gal tac­tic of padding away Son­ny’s off-breaks pitched out­side of the off-stump).

Ra­mad­hin was the first of the mod­ern breed of mys­tery off-spin­ners, as he mixed his stock ball turn­ing from off–to leg with the leg-spin­ner turn­ing from leg to off. He caused pan­de­mo­ni­um amongst the Eng­lish bats­men un­able to read his both-ways turn.

His­toric too about the Ra­mad­hin/Valen­tine-spawned vic­to­ry of 1950 over Eng­land was that it gave the free­dom and per­mis­sion to the great Lord Kitch­en­er, gui­tar in hand and with a band of West In­di­ans, to reg­is­ter in ca­lyp­so, lib­er­a­tion in crick­et from the bondage of slav­ery and colo­nial­ism. They marched on­to the field at Lords singing and danc­ing in cel­e­bra­tion of the tri­umph over the over­lords of our past. “The au­dac­i­ty of these West In­di­ans,” must have stuck in the throat of the stiff up­per lip.

While 1950 was not the first as­so­ci­a­tion be­tween ca­lyp­so and crick­et (that dates back to 1926–Atil­la the Hun–Nass­er Khan) Kitch­en­er’s tri­umphant din­go­lay on­to the field at Lords and sub­se­quent­ly, Lord Be­gin­ner’s “Those two lit­tle pals of mine–Ra­mad­hin and Valen­tine” locked-in the ca­lyp­son­ian, the recorder of his­to­ry, in­to a long em­brace with crick­et.

Ra­mad­hin’s pass­ing, in these times when West In­dies crick­et is low­er in sta­tus and ca­pa­bil­i­ty than it ever was, gives West In­di­ans play­ers, sup­port­ers, ad­min­is­tra­tors and oth­ers an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­flect on the lega­cy of na­tion­hood, of suc­cess and in­no­va­tion all of which form el­e­ments of our her­itage.

Through his tran­si­tion, Son­ny is telling our young crick­eters that they have a his­to­ry to be proud of; to young and yet-to-be-proven play­ers, he and his pal, Al­fred Valen­tine, are say­ing that they car­ry with­in them the West In­di­an ca­pac­i­ty for con­quest though lack­ing in ex­pe­ri­ence.

Ra­mad­hin al­so led In­do-West In­di­ans to a place in their crick­et teams as the first crick­eter of East In­di­an her­itage to be a per­ma­nent and val­ued team mem­ber of the West In­dies crick­et team. He opened the door for Kan­hai, Solomon, Butch­er, Kallichar­ran and a num­ber of In­di­an spin bowlers to lodge them­selves in­to West In­di­an crick­et teams. He was ef­fec­tive­ly say­ing there is tal­ent, sta­mi­na–he bowled 43 overs in the first in­nings and 72 overs in the Sec­ond Test at Lord’s in the 1950 se­ries ver­sus Eng­land amongst us. It was one of his most sig­nif­i­cant state­ments of com­mit­ment to the West In­di­an cause.

Farewell, Son­ny, and thanks to the team of 1950 for mak­ing us whole.