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George Headley
source: Twitter handle Wayne Chen (@wcchen)

 

Perhaps one of the most universally liked activities in nearly every household around the world is where a family sits down to rekindle old memories over a family album. Revisiting events that made the family what it is. And in events where an album belongs to an era that today’s children are barely familiar with, then a parent is often asked, “Hey mom, who’s this? Is this my great grandfather, what was he like? Why does everyone speak about him even today?”

But imagine, if there was ever a sight where the current crop of West Indian cricketers would gather around over a table page-turning an album comprising the greatest personalities that shaped one of the bastions of cricketing excellence, then one of the gentleman that would be gazed at with undiminishing curiosity would be Sir George Headley.

It might only make for an endearing sight, for instance, to see the likes of Nkrumah Bonner, Oshane Thomas or Joshua Da Silva asking a Holder or Gayle, “Who’s this gentleman; why’s he revered even today?”

Well, many moons ago, when Sir Sobers hadn’t even arrived in the game he aced with all-round heroics, when ‘The Prince of Trinidad’ wasn’t even born, way before swagger and Sir Viv became one and the same thing, and where the team was still addressed as West Indies– not Windies- as if to suggest one lacks even the time to properly address an important cricketing DNA- there was a certain George Headley.

And he lorded at the crease with a sense of majesty that truly defines the great forefathers of West Indian cricket.

Think of Frank Worrell. Remember Clyde Walcott. Think of Everton Weekes.

All of who added a sense of kingly dominance to the sport that may appear alien to those maulers of cash-rich T20 leagues for whom cricket is routinely about sending the ball out of the park.

But unlike most outstanding West Indians who were endowed with a towering frame and boasted pumping muscles, think the great Wes Hall of the yesteryears and athletes like Ambrose and Pollard- George Headley was the anti-thesis of huge.

He wasn’t thickness but preciseness. He wasn’t Karaoke loudness, but fluid instrumental music. Wagner- not Mettalica.

More Charlie Parker than Michael Jackson.

Yet his feats reverberate in every ear that hails the melody that’s West Indian cricket.

George Headley, who ever batted for just 40 Test innings, wasn’t about empowering frame, but efforts that empowered a people; a collective subjected to servitude by its colonial masters whose mantra in life was to rule by an iron fist.

And Headley’s great batting feats- 10 centuries and 5 fifties- suggest he reached a landmark in nearly every third inning. How could this not serve a sense of liberation to a people traumatized by unsparing service to their white masters?

In some ways, he was a liberator, someone whose batting was a great unifier at a time the world was divided, much like it is today, on needless hoopla surrounding skin color.

Perhaps what makes the Sir George Headley a standout and a leading light of Caribbean cricket was that in an age where England and Australia were thought of as the masters of the game, he led the Caribbean charge with full force and almost single-handedly.

A nimble, thinly built cricketer who struck the ball powerfully, George Headley’s cricket was about absolute devotion to the cause of establishing the West Indies as a force at the highest level, even if there wasn’t a plenty of cricket played in the days subjugated by the outbreak of World War.

But you could say almost to a point of being faultless that of every given opportunity where the Panama-born Jamaican cricketer walked out to bat, runs flew from the willow akin to rains in the Amazon.

Interestingly, a touch of grace and class also punctuated the batting of a man who loved to hit the ball with force.

Sir Don, ever incisive in his analysis of the great West Indian, had remarked, “He was perhaps one of the greatest batsmen of his time.”

Richie Benaud, who admitted at having never seen George Headley bat live says he’d count on the wisdom of those he knew had seen the right-hander and there was a time in the 30s where it seemed Headley ‘would never get out.’

Until his last days, Sir Tony Cozier would often in pre-match and post-match conferences site the brilliance of the hero of the Caribbean whose feats united islands separated by individual identity.

But what mustn’t be undermined is that long before we named the great Tendulkar as the ‘Little Master’, his own people taking their emotional attachment to the Mumbaikar a tad bit far hailing him as ‘God,’ George Headley too commanded a nickname.

One that was of mythical proportions.

It’s a moniker that could perhaps inspire a reassuring smile from the likes of Dravid.

Sir George Headley was fondly regarded as the ‘Atlas’ of West Indian batting for his penchant at absorbing all the pressure and doing the bulwark of the side’s scoring.

But nothing, just about nothing can truly indicate the greatness of a man revered even four decades since his passing is the sheer impact he had when he first wielded a bat in the game’s classiest form.

How many batsmen, you’d think have gone on to score 500 or let’s say 600-plus runs in their maiden Test series?

But when George Headley faced an England powered by Rhodes, Wyatt, Haig and Voce, he amassed 703 from just 4 Tests. His average? One that would unite a Hussey, Sachin, Kallis and Sangakkara in sheer awe- 87!

To those, who perhaps fondly respect Headley nicknaming him ‘Black Bradman,’ must realize how far from the mark they truly are.

If for anything, Headley, with all due respect fared miles better than one of the greatest bats to have ever smashed bowlers.

In his first Test series, Sir Don struck 468 runs from 8 innings at 66. Headley amassed considerably higher numbers.

Moreover, that George Headley must be revered as just George Headley and not as some ‘Black Bradman,’ boils down to a line of statistic that fans are either too clever to ignore or hopelessly unaware about.

Sir Don batted for 80 Test innings in all while Headley had no more than 40 chances with the bat. Of these, some of the strongest line-ups failed to dismiss him on 4 occasions.

Yet that Headley reserved his best for the English pays fine testimony to the fact that with bravery and a sense of purpose, the aggrieved can fight back against the assailant.

How?

1852 of his 2190 runs came against West Indians’ greatest colonial masters- the English.

With rasp cuts and glorious hooks, two of the most charismatic strokes in his armoury, George Headley blasted England by scoring 8 of his 10 Test centuries against a familiar foe.

But at the heart of the Headley brilliance lays the golden touch at the Mecca of Cricket, perhaps a feat a tad bit unsung even to this day.

It’s not Tendulkar, Lara, Sobers, Sir Viv or even Victor Trumper who scored two tons at Lord’s; it’s George Headley, the man born to extreme poverty but one whose batting feats enriched a generation that so desperately desired a hero to rescue them from the plight of economic travesty.

Though, no salutation to Headley would ever be rendered complete without touching upon the instance wherein he stood as a rock between an England certain to maul his West Indies and a frail-looking side that had all but given up.

In the Fourth Test at Kingston, 1930, where thanks to Andy Sandham’s triple century, England put a whopping 849 on the board, with WI managing just 286 initially, one man stood up in the fourth inning with the hosts needing 836 to win.

A nearly 400-minute stay at the crease resulted in arguably the greatest double hundred on West Indian soil in the ‘30s- Headley saved the day with a 223 when his team may have been paralyzed by merely looking at the target they were put against.

For generations to come, we might debate endlessly about whose batting exploits are the greatest. We’ll engage in heated discussions with those who’ll side with Sir Sobers’ 365 in defending Lara’s quadruple hundred. We’ll endlessly quarrel as to what mattered more- Lloyd’s genius captaincy or Sir Viv’s kingly strokeplay.

But in the annals of West Indian cricket, Sir George Headley- not Black Bradman, but George Headley- will colour our imagination with unfettered brilliance with which he charmed Caribbean islands and with it, much of the world long before the sport became our everyday habit.

A forefather whose image in the album would be placed before the latter generations’ that sprung to life.

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