Dilly Come in! McWatt, Binns, Depeiza, Walcott, Nunes

How good was Sonny Ramadhin?

Sonny Ram was excellent..one of the true enigmas in cricket history.  his partner Valentine was another. 

dem 2 guys just appeared you know man from nowhere..picked right out of whatever cricket they played..hit england, got picked for the tests and the rest is history...19/20 years old.  they bowled a lot of overs for so young.  Valentine was all orthodoxy, accurate and spin like peas.  Ram with his button downed sleeves same way..accurate, spin, but all the balls with same action..off break, leg break, top spinner etc.

they were both for real but their problem was the quality of the selected west indian leadership on the field..and a war that existed between on the team bajan and Titty white men.  they hated each other...Goddard and Stollmeyer in particular.

Goddard had the upper hand for a while but he was a crummy captain..a mentally incompetent man in my estimation. 

Stollmeyer was the better captai, higher quality intelect,  save he could not bring himself to apply full pressure on the white teams. 

so when west indies had england down for the count for eg., Stollmeyer let them up off the floor, to reconstitute themselves and defeat west indies. so in the end it did not matter who led..Goddard with his intellectual short-comings, or  Stollmeyer with his 'cousin cricket'... west indies ended up against it

Goddard wasted Ram and Val with his atrocious handling of them.  all he knew was give the ball to Ram and Val. 

Conditions in Oz demanded pace and in Gomez and Worrell..as well as a couple of the other faster bowlers,  west indies had decisive pace for the conditions in 1951.  Goddard rubbed the new ball in the turf to bruise it so that Ram and Val could get grip..when the conditions called for pace instead.  that is how incompetent Goddard was.

and all the Titty senior players...white players... deserted Goddard and the team fell apart constantly on the field.  west indies lost, 4 games to 1 but was in position to win all 5 tests easily

in 1957 Goddard tossed the ball to Ramadin in england second innings of the first test and made him bowl 98 overs consecutively. and that was for all intent and purpose the end of him at 28 years of age.

Colin Cowdrey and Peter May, and the english umps conspired to neutralize Ramadin and stole that test match, turning the series right around.  and Goddard just let Ramadin bowl and bowl and bowl..wearing out his main weapon, reducing him to nothing for the remainder of the series. 

that is how stupid, mentally incompetent Goddard was. or else he was a saboteur, deliberately destroying west indian chances.  Goddard it appeared could not thinks past even a day of time..could not  even make plans for the next day, the next test, for the whole series, with the resources he had at his disposal.  that is what killed the entire west indian effort after 1950, until recuperation  under Worrell in 1961.  the captaincy of Goddard, Stollmeyer, Dennis Atkinson and Alexander was not nearly good enough..far from good enough

98 overs consecutive overs is criminal. Can you imagine something like that happening today? Ramadhin and Valentine's numbers are quite similar. As a batsman, of those two, whom would you have least liked to have faced? How many Tests did Ramadhin and Gibbs bowl together?

Ram and Gibbs must have bowled just 2-3 tests between then...in 1958 against Pak I think one game but I have to check that out.

then I think 1 test in Oz in 1961.  Gibbs exploded on the scene Ram did not do so well and Gibbs was preferred next test when they went with the 1 spinner.

much of what I said of the 1950's I I did off the history of the game.  I was alive but a child, not conscious of the goings on. by 1961 my memory is good but a little fade on Gibbs Ramadin coincidences

I saw Ramadin bowl in 1960 at the QPO...and I saw Valentine for the firs time for Jamaica in 1965 at the QPO as captain of Jamaica.  he had retired from test cricket and was playing regionals only.  he was like a soldier marching up to the wicket.  and he did not bowl much.

so I know those guys only from the massive amount I read about them, word of mouth, some film and just the bit of them I saw directly.  as class spinners I would have preferred to avoid them both as a batsman.  In real life I could not deal very well with class spin.  I could kill a sh!tttong spinner...but I ran into some guys who were good spinners man..really good... and they were tears. ::LOL:: ::LOL:: ::LOL:: ::LOL:: ::LOL::

oh my god!  there was one left armer in central Titty in a Grey Nichols game.  oh Jesus christ!  I faced about 7 balls from dat guy and every single one could have got me.  my head was sent spinning by dat guy.  I did not have a clue.  the last one bowled me down..all 3 stumps ::LOL:: ::LOL:: ::LOL:: ::LOL::

I can imagine what Ram and val did to the batsmen who faced them.  it could not have been easy..even if some of them managed to score some runs
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Was it common for Ramadhin to open the bowling in the second innings?

Do you have any memories of the 1960 Test against England in Trinidad?

no it wasn't common for Ram to open the bowling.  that was just total mental retardation on the part of the Captain John Goddard.

if you go to the Oz test match where Ram opened the bowling and read up reviews of it you will see that that the conditions called for pace and the pace did very well indeed.

look..in their day Worrell, left arm medium fast..and Gomez..right arm medium fast would eat you up if the conditions helped them.  soon I will try to pull up some records to demonstrate.

the then wicbc wanted white captains period.  but west indies would not win with white captains. none were really nationalist, west indian first people,  where they were not totally incompetent.  Alexander was a disciplinarian and the wicbc emphasized that with him.  that is why they made him captain after just 2 test matches.

at first they gave it to Worrell in 1958 but worrell said he had to complete his degree regardless.  but Alexander was not a good captain..or as good as a test captain should be.  but he was no mental incompetent like Goddard was. yet he was still elitist with the emphasis on discipline.. which combination led to the loss of Roy Gilchrist, the devastating fast bowler from up the Yard.

on the 1960 test at the QPO..the one I believe you are referring to I posted up a lot of comments some time ago...I will try to find them

Alexis Nunes  related  ??  ::LOL::


Toss in about ten minutes and that gives us enough time to find out if our presenter

Alexis Nunes can save West Indies cricket .

~~ When those 2 friends of mine, Ramadhin and Valentine ~~

                               

1990 ReUnion :
                                   

I mean we did win in 1950 in england but west indies were overwhelmingly superior to england in 1950.  but in 1953-54 when england were stronger it came down to tactics and management....

west indies won the first 2 tests under Stollmeyer easily..where upon he Stollmeyer began to sabotage west indies chances and the series ended up evens..

it was the same thing in 1951 in Oz..or nearly the same thing..sabotage or incompetence by Goddard that turned what should have been a sweep into a 4-1 loss.

in 1955 it was Stollmeyer again and lots of injury to him and he could not play often and retired at the end of that series..against the Oz. in his place the wcb drafted in Dennis Atkinson another bajan white with the W's in the team. 

Atkinson was a very ordinary player whose place in the side was questionable.  he had no qualifications and experience as captain.  somehow he managed to score a double century and save west indies in that series..in a big stand with Clairmont Depeiza...the keeper... one of the great anomalies in cricket history.

but with Atkinson as captain the west indies played with little commitment and lost that series in brutal fashion..just as we lost in 1957..2 years later in england.. with the return of Goddard as captain at 37 years of age, engineered by Errol dos Santos, the Czar of the wicbc in the 19-fiftie

Errol Dos Santos....did not want a black captain...period.  he was an implacable enemy of the possibility of black captains and did all he could to prevent any such development.  hence once Stollmeyer retired he began a subtefuge to return Goddard which was successful.  so the west indian ship sailed to its english waterloo in 1957 under an older, mentally incompetent..at least for cricket leadership..leader.

the rest is history!

we did win in 1950...but the only other series we won until the Paks in 1958 was against Indian 1953 in the west indies by a margin of just 1 test decided.  we also beat NZ... but in those days NZ were like this current west indies team Lloyd put on the field here..or worse

we lost to england and the OZ due entirely to the leadership of the team..Stollmeyer and Goddard.  we began to win again under Alexander and due to overwhelmingly superiority to Pak at home and India on the road.  Pak made sure to beat us in 1959..a questionable win due to umpiring questions

we lost to Oz in Oz for the same reason..bad umpiring under Worrell.  but we began to win everywhere else once the captaincy became really nationalist