THE THREE Ws of West Indian Cricket

THE THREE TERRIBLE Ws: Their Origins and Significance

The ‘Three Terrible Ws, as they were always respectfully known in the Caribbean, loom large in the history of cricket. They represent perhaps the most prolific formation in the middle of any batting order. They were also the first outstanding black batsmen produced by Barbados in a community that was 95% non-white. As such, they were the first quintessential sporting heroes of that cricket-mad society. Political and cultural leaders of all colours and creeds recognized their enormous significance and so eventually promoted the notion that the three of them should be knighted. This honor was duly bestowed upon them – Worrell in 1964, Walcott in 1993, and Weekes in 1995. Indeed Sir Clyde Walcott, Sir Everton Weekes, and Sir Frank Worrell left a telling impact upon all West Indians. Few cricketers in this region have been able to escape their lasting and pervasive influence.

Primary purpose of this study then, are to reflect upon their lives and cricketing careers, to place the ‘Three Terrible Ws’ in their proper historical perspectives, and to comment the enviable statistics which they forged on the playing field. It is interesting to observe after they had hung up their cleats, how similar their accomplishments were, even though they developed, peaked and declined at different times. Frank Worrell, for instance, was undeniably one of the world’s greatest batsmen during the period 1944-50; Everton Weekes held semilar ways during 1948-53; and Clyde Walcott was a dominating presence during 1953-55. Walcott and Weekes retired from test cricket in their early thirties, while Worrell soldiered on until he was 39. While Worrell considerably enhanced considerably his reputation as a leader of men, he watched his wonderful first-class statistics decline as his abundant skills inevitably diminished.

Remarkably perhaps, three stars were born within 17 months and one mile of each other, within walking distance from the famous Kensington Oval in Bridgetown. They grew up in an insular world that was still suffering the effects of a prolonged depression in the sugar market and was still almost paralysed by racial discrimination, élitism and snobbery of the most blatant and pernicious kind. As black children in this hostile environment, they eventually made their way up the socio-economic ladder, largely on the strength of their cricketing excellence. Worrell, of course, decided to upgrade his academic qualifications before departing from the sporting stage and earned a good artis degree in economics and sociology from the University of Manchester. That strategy had much to do with the West Indies Cricket Board of Controls, (WICBC) decision in 1960 to appoint him the first black captain of a touring team. While Walcott sprang from middle-class roots, Worrell belonged to the lower-middle income stratum; and Weekes’s origins were more modest still.

Barbados by this time (the interwar years) had become addicted to two pursuits, cricket and education. The former was regarded as the greatest kinetic activity invented by mortal intellect, while the latter was seen as the sine qua non of all constructive endeavours. The religious, intellectual, social and cultural leaders were sure that cricket had the magical virtues capable of transforming lawless and rambunctious lads into law-abiding and useful citizens and that education lay at the very base of successful business, law, and politics. The élite regarded education and cricket as essential tools in the process of socialization and social control, while the masses saw these two addictions as welcome means of escape from poverty and the only secure ladders which provided any meaningful form of social mobility.

At a time when so much significance was attached to order and degree, it is not surprising that Walcott began his cricket career playing for Harrison College and Spartan. These connections identified his place within the spectrum and confirmed his social status. Harrison was the academic institution which had taught the sons of the well-to-do since its establishment in 1733, and Spartan had been specificably founded in 1893 to cater to the interests of middle-class Blacks and Mulattoes. who (on the simple basis of colour) were ineligible to join the Pickwick Club, a middle-class institution that was exclusively for whites. Non-white alumni of Harrison College had naturally gravitated towards Spartan for more than 50 years by the time that Clyde joined the ranks of that club in 1944. Others from the lower strata in the society were inadmissible, whatever their colour or their creed.

The Walcotts were a well-established middle-class family in Barbados. Clyde’s father Frank was a printing engineer who worked for the Barbados Advocate, the leading newspaper on the island. His maternal uncle, Dr Edgar Morris, was a dentist who had seceded from the élitist Spartan club in 1914 to help found Empire when Herman Griffith’s application to join Spartan was unceremoniously rejected. The Walcotts were not wealthy by any means, but they could afford to send Clyde and his elder brother Keith to Harrison College at a time when secondary education was not free and scholarships were scarce. Admission fees to Harrison in those days were set at Ë 15 per annum...three times the amount exacted from Combermere and other second-grade secondary schools on the island.

Frank Worrell’s roots, however, did not permit such extravagance. His working class parents had emigrated to the United States and had left him in the care of his grandmother. Remittances from North America allowed him to attend Combermere School, which had been designated second-grade by the Education Act of 1878. Originally established in 1695 to cater mainly to the needs of poor Whites, it had traditionally served as the haven for children whose parents could not afford the higher fees reguired to attend the so-called first-grade secondary schools, Harrison College and the Lodge. Old Combermerians routinely gravitated towards Empire, the club which was founded for the express purpose of taking care of those lower-middle income Blacks whom Spartan had snubbed.