Sport Mat­ters re­turns af­ter a short hia­tus. Dur­ing this time, crick­et lost two spin icons who had a great im­pact on the sport dur­ing their time. Son­ny Ra­mad­hin and Shane Warne were gi­ants of their eras, and the Fac­ul­ty of Sport recog­nis­es their con­tri­bu­tion to the game on and off the field.

Son­ny Ra­mad­hin, the first West In­di­an of East In­di­an ori­gin to rep­re­sent the West In­dies, part­nered with Alf Valen­tine to craft the first West In­di­an se­ries vic­to­ry in Eng­land in 1950. The Trinida­di­an/Ja­maican part­ner­ship of “those two pals of mine, Ra­mad­hin and Valen­tine” was im­mor­talised in ca­lyp­so by Lord Kitch­en­er. The sig­nif­i­cance of that se­ries vic­to­ry and their achieve­ment lay the foun­da­tion of an en­tire gen­er­a­tion.

In 1948, al­most 500 im­mi­grants sailed to Eng­land on the Em­pire Win­drush to fill a labour gap in that coun­try. Leav­ing the warmth of the Caribbean cli­mate and so­ci­ety, they faced a gru­elling in­doc­tri­na­tion to Eng­lish cli­mate and so­ci­ety, both of which were icy cold and un­wel­com­ing. The mi­gra­tion that con­tin­ued for over two decades was for a bet­ter life but with knowl­edge of hard­ships ahead. That was par­tic­u­lar­ly bru­tal for the first set of West In­di­ans who were walk­ing in­to the un­known.

When the West In­di­an crick­et team toured Eng­land in 1950, it was the first di­rect link with the “moth­er coun­try”. Crick­et was an area where West In­di­ans could be on lev­el ground with the Eng­lish. Yet, a crush­ing de­feat in the first Test left West In­di­ans in doubt. On­ly Alf Valen­tine’s 8-104 (and Ra­mad­hin 2-90) in the first in­nings gave any cause for cel­e­bra­tion. The sec­ond Test saw Ra­mad­hin take 5-66 and 6-86 (and Valen­tine 4-48 and 3-79). By the time the 4 Test se­ries end­ed 3-1 in WI’s favour, Valen­tine had tak­en 33 wick­ets and Ra­mad­hin 26.

The con­fi­dence and pride de­rived by those ear­ly em­i­grants through the West In­dies team re­mained a fea­ture of all sub­se­quent teams and the Win­drush gen­er­a­tion.

By the time Ra­mad­hin end­ed his ca­reer span­ning twelve years, he had tak­en 158 wick­ets at an av­er­age of 28.98 with a miser­ly econ­o­my rate of 1.97. He had 10 five-wick­et hauls and one 10-wick­et per­for­mance in a Test. Out­side of that, he en­livened the as­pi­ra­tions of a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of our pop­u­la­tion, which had sub­se­quent­ly seen the over-pro­por­tion­ate rise of West In­di­an crick­eters of East In­di­an ori­gin.

Ra­mad­hin was of hum­ble back­ground and was a sim­ple man. Born Son­ny Ra­mad­hin, he saw his name changed to KT Ra­mad­hin when he went to play do­mes­tic crick­et in Eng­land. He was told he must have ini­tials be­fore his name and the next day, he saw KT pre­ced­ing his sur­name in the news­pa­per. He is yet to find out what KT stands for! His stat­ue in Palmiste Park re­mains a re­minder of the small gi­ant who passed away on Feb­ru­ary 27, aged 91.

The Fac­ul­ty of Sport re­calls the pe­ri­od of glo­ry that Ra­mad­hin and oth­er he­roes brought to the re­gion. Through Mas­sive Open On­line Course on the His­to­ry of West In­dies Crick­et to be launched next month, all en­thu­si­asts can re­live, or learn about West In­dies crick­et and its rel­e­vance to dif­fer­ent pe­ri­ods of our col­lec­tive his­to­ry.

A to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ty, Shane Warne was al­so a gi­ant in crick­et. One of the great­est leg spin­ners if not the great­est, Warne was an in­te­gral part of the world-con­quer­ing Aus­tralian team that took over the man­tle from the West In­dies in 1994. Where­as Ra­mad­hin was a shy man who main­tained a low pro­file on and off the field, Warne brought flair and hype in­to his life whether play­ing, com­men­tat­ing, coach­ing or so­cial­is­ing. If Ra­mad­hin rep­re­sent­ed the Black-and-White era, Warne did the same for the 4K-3D era. He passed away on March 4, aged 52.

Sur­round­ed by fast bowlers of world re­pute, able to sin­gle-hand­ed­ly de­stroy bat­ting at­tacks, Warne en­sured that there was al­ways a place for a spin­ner in the team. And when the ball lost its shine, he set to work his mag­ic. End­ing with 708 wick­ets from 145 Tests (Ave 25.4 Econ 2.65), he was, along with Muthi­ah Mu­ralitha­ran (800 Test wick­ets), the most dom­i­nant spin bowler in ei­ther decade around the turn of the cen­tu­ry. What set him aside, how­ev­er, was his easy-ac­tion but fe­ro­cious spin.

Though he re­ceived a 12-month ban for fail­ing a drug test, his ac­tion and ac­tions nev­er drew scruti­ny on the field. Hav­ing tog­gled the record for most Test wick­ets with Mu­ralitha­ran, the ban end­ed any chance of claim­ing it for long. Un­like oth­er greats of the past, his achieve­ments tran­scend­ed all forms of the game, see­ing him dom­i­nat­ing One-day In­ter­na­tion­als (194 games with 293 wick­ets) and T20 (73 games with 70 wick­ets), both with re­spectable av­er­ages and econ­o­my rates. He went on to be­come the first play­er/coach in the In­di­an Pre­mier League in the twi­light of his ca­reer.

Crick­et lost two con­trast­ing icons with­in a few days of this year. Both left in­deli­ble marks on crick­et and will be missed.

Dr Ak­shai Mans­ingh is Dean, Fac­ul­ty of Sport, UWI. He can be reached at ak­shai.mans­ingh@uwi.edu