It was fitting that Everton FC won their crucial English Premier League tie against Leicester City on Wednesday. Soon after the match ended with the Toffees winning 2-1, news broke that the West Indies batting legend Sir Everton Weekes was no more.
Weekes, who died aged 95 at his home in Barbados, was named after the football club his father was an avid fan of. The English off-spinner, Jim Laker, when told about this, had quipped: “Thank god he wasn’t a supporter of West Bromwich Albion!”
Weekes’ records are known: He scored 4,455 runs in 48 Tests with 15 centuries at an average of 58.62. He remains the only man to have scored centuries in five consecutive Test innings, including two in the 1948 Test at the Eden Gardens, Calcutta.
But more than the records, it was the complete dominance that Weekes had on the bowling that has drawn comparisons with players from other eras, including Viv Richards.
Like Richards, Weekes had the ability not merely to dominate any bowling attack, but to demolish it. Standing at only 5 feet 6 inches, Weekes excelled in whiplash square cuts, the half-cut half-drive and ferocious hooks against the faster bowlers, while he could drive effortlessly off both the front and the back foot.
Once he had his eyes set, he would have enough time to hit the good-length ball seemingly at will to off or on, just like Richards would. The one key difference between the two was Weekes, unlike Richards, would seldom play shots in the air in front of the wicket.
Former West Indies captain Jeffrey Stollmeyer, in his memoirs Everything Under the Sun, wrote: “I consider (Frank) Worrell the sounder in defence, Weekes the greater attacking force; Worrell the more graceful, Weekes the more devastating…”
As Weekes mentioned in several interviews, his batting was conditioned by his upbringing. Barred from playing at the white-only Pickwick Club, he took to playing in the narrow alleys of Barbados. There he was forced to hit the ball along the ground, if it was lofted and it entered one of the many homes, that would mean the end of the game. No wonder he struck only one six in his entire Test career, against Bill Johnston of Australia.
He was one of the three Ws, along with Sir Frank Worrell and Sir Clyde Walcott, who contributed to the rise of West Indies cricket and they symbolised what would later be termed “Black Power”. Scyld Berry once wrote in The Daily Telegraph of a significant moment in the history of race relations in cricket during
the Australian tour of the West Indies in 1954-55. When one of the white West Indian players threw a party, the Australians under Ian Johnson refused to accept the invitation if the black West Indian players were not invited as well. Much of that bonhomie was because of Sir Everton, whose lasting philosophy was “Live and let live”.
Never for him any bitterness: born into a poor family in 1925 in Barbados, then in the grip of white plantation masters where concepts of social justice, equality or black lives matter did not simply exist, Weekes was happy with what he had. He was good at football also, but cricket was his first love. The only way he could get inside the Kensington Oval was by assisting the groundsman, but he still could not play cricket. Formal cricket training would only happen during a stint with the Barbados defence forces.
When Weekes was first picked to play for the West Indies, he was ineligible to vote because of his poor financial condition. Not until 1950 would he be granted that right. “So I was representing my country but my country was not representing me,” he wrote in his autobiography, Mastering the Craft.
Weekes played Test cricket only for ten years before an injury and squabbling between the various boards of the Caribbean cut short his career. But he never had any regrets. He took up bridge, became a master poker player, sat in the commentators’ box alongside Tony Cozier and also had a stint as ICC match referee.
Weekes could never get to captain the West Indies, neither did Walcott — both were passed over for the job in favour of Gerry Alexander, who would be the last white man to lead a West Indies team. George Headley did in one Test in 1947-48 but it was not until 1960 that West Indies would have a black captain in Worrell.
“For starters, I would say the word ‘hate’ has been removed from my vocabulary,” Weekes said when he was asked in the commentary box last year how he kept going.
It’s only fitting that the man who enjoyed life to the full will have his final resting place alongside those of his friends Walcott and Worrell on the grounds of the University of West Indies, a short
distance away from the Kensington Oval, the breeze from the sea blowing over them as it did during their heroic exploits that enabled a people to stand tall. With grace and without hate.