If you were born male in the West Indies in the mid-1950s, as I was, one had no choice but to be inundated with the names of the ‘three Ws’: Everton Weekes, Frank Worrell and Clyde Walcott. Also ingrained in the memory for eternity were the names of two spinners – the Trinidadian Sonny Ramadhin, who supposedly bowled right-arm off-breaks but was also known to put in the regular leg-break and who usually bowled with a cap on and sleeves rolled down; and the seemingly always smiling, bespectacled Jamaican, the original ‘Toothpick’, Alfred Valentine, who bowled orthodox left-arm. The pair, Ram and Val as they became known, were the bowling tormentors after the three Ws had bludgeoned and caressed runs galore when the West Indies toured England in 1950 and won a Test in the United Kingdom for the first time.
Now Val is no longer with us. Personally, I have lost a friend, while the West Indies have lost one of their greatest names and cricketing figures, one who actually created West Indies cricketing history, even folklore. Of the approximately two hundred and seventy (only) West Indian Test cricketers since the team’s inception in 1928, Valentine and Ramadhin will always have their names twinned for their exploits in 1950. So revered were the two spinners – Valentine was twenty then and Ramadhin twenty-one – that they were celebrated firstly by Lord Beginner, a Trinidadian calypsonian living in the UK, with: ‘Those little pals of mine/Ramadhin and Valentine.’ The better-known Lord Kitchener also sung a great ditty after the West Indies had won the second Test of the four-Test series at Lord’s, thus levelling the series. ‘Ramadhin, you deserve a title; Ramadhin, followed by a medal; And we can’t leave behind; the invincible Jamaican, Valentine.’
Few who saw the photographs or the newsreel films of the celebrating West Indians as they crossed the hallowed turf of Lord’s on that summer’s day on 29 June would forget the crowds, with their guitars and noisemakers. What a celebration that was. The statistics of Ramadhin and Valentine on that tour were astounding when compared to modern-day cricket. The West Indies won the series 3–1 and in that historical Lord’s Test, Ramadhin had match figures of 115–70–152–11. Valentine’s returns for that game were equally mind boggling – 117–75–127–7. In the four Tests, Ramadhin bowled 377.5 overs and Valentine an incredible 422.3 overs, capturing, respectively, twenty-six wickets at 21 apiece and thirty-three wickets at 20 apiece – totally surreal stuff. They bowled about two hundred overs between them in each Test! These guys must have been bowling with Exocet missiles since the ball hardly left the playing square. It was of little wonder that Valentine was selected as a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1951.
Alfred Valentine only played in thirty-six Tests from 1950 to 1962 and took 139 wickets at an average of 30.32 from approximately 2,158 overs. His economy rate (runs scored per over) though, is stupendous – 1.95. He could place the ball on a coin delivery after delivery. Oh, for such accuracy now in West Indies cricket. In 1996, when Jamaican Pat Rousseau came to be president of the West Indies Cricket Board, he effected an unprecedented event. He invited all of the living West Indies Test cricketers to a banquet in Jamaica. Of course Val was there, the life of the huge party, a single embodiment of being West Indian and then a West Indian cricketer. Afterwards, in 1998, I actually played a few benefit games with the then seemingly indestructible Valentine – who had retired to Miami – in Lauderhill, Florida, and again he held court. I know I will miss him, but his legend as a West Indian cricketer and history-making icon will live forever.
Alfred Louis Valentine: b Kingston, Jamaica, 28 April 1930; d 11 May 2004