by Clayton Goodwin
It was a good time to take the plunge for a date with history and with legend. That long hot summer of 1976 was made for cricket – and the West Indies cricketers were here in England. Not any West Indies team, mind you – but THE West Indies with a generation of some of the greatest names in sport that dominated the cricket field, and more than just that, for the next two decades – and our memories for ever. I had left my office job in the marketing department of a construction company at the end of the previous week and on the morning of 1st June 1976 sat behind the type-writer in my own sitting-room to start work – proper work. There was cricket to watch and a whole new life to begin.
I had been a part-time journalist already for 15 years but after my first attempt at self-employment had ended prematurely when a printers’ strike paralysed the industry ten years earlier I had resigned myself to remaining on the outside looking in. That was unless something out of the ordinary happened to provide for me to cast my future to chance with some credence of success. And so it did. In 1975 international cricket introduced a World Cup which West Indies won. The captain of the victorious team, Clive Lloyd, was Guyanese, and so was publisher Arif Ali. He wanted to capitalise on the moment by bringing out a special supplement on the history of West Indies cricket, and remembered that cricket enthusiast – myself – whom he had first met when we were on a beauty contest judging panel together in Bradford. His faith led me into the life I have enjoyed for half-a-century – with cricket, West Indies cricket, at the heart of it.
1976 will be associated with many things. Honours stood even after the first two drawn Test Matches and then the West Indian steam-roller, fired up by opposing captain Tony Greig’s perceived slur about them “grovelling”, got into its triumphant rhythm. As the bats of Viv Richards – more dominant than any visiting batsman since Donald Bradman – Gordon Greenidge, Roy Fredericks, Clive Lloyd, Alvin Kallicharran, Lawrence Rowe, and there were more, lashed boundary after boundary, the England batting went down before the pace and aggression of fast bowlers Michael Holding, Andy Roberts and Wayne Daniel.
When I went to Barbados in March 1981, my first visit to the region, West Indies were set fairly as the kings of cricket. Their aura derived not just from the number and scale of the victories, but by the manner in which those victories were achieved. There, at the Kensington Oval, I was privileged to see one of the greatest overs ever bowled in Test cricket. Yes, that was the one Holding sent down to Geoffrey Boycott. The Jamaican bowled five deliveries of varying and increasing intensity which beat the England opening batsman by their sheer speed and with the sixth knocked back his wicket. There was much more of that type of play to see in the seasons ahead.
That match entered history in another way, too. Roland Butcher became the first black West Indian cricketer to play in a Test match for England, and he made his debut there in Barbados where he had been born. West Indian club cricket was thriving in England at that time, and players from the Caribbean were plentiful in the county championship. So it remained for several years, and it would have been unthinkable that they would vanish from the county championship so suddenly and almost completely as they have. Butcher, though, remains committed to the game both in the United Kingdom and Caribbean. He, along with Wilfred Slack, Norman Cowans, Neil Williams and Daniel formed the backbone of a strong Middlesex team which headlined my cricket coverage over the next decade.
I had the honour to be working alongside some of the finest commentators and journalists the profession has known. Tony Cozier’s voice and pen were ubiquitous over the air-waves and in the pages of numerous publications, and those words will be bracketed always with those of Tony Becca, chief sports correspondent of Gleaner newspapers. They passed away within a couple of years of each other though, with a dearth of successors, their reputations and opinions endure. Joseph “Reds” Perreira, the third member of that triumvirate, is happily still with us. I spent many hours in the press-box in the company of the polymath Professor John Figueroa, notable by his expansive beard, who was married to Dorothy, the sister of Jerry Alexander, the former West Indies captain and wicketkeeper. My recollection goes back further to my years as a part-time reporter and meeting the Gleaner’s flamboyant “Strebor” Roberts, doyen of the Caribbean sports reporting press.
It was my meeting, while I was still a teenage press messenger, with Frank Worrell that steered me from my Kent country village to a life in the West Indian press, a Jamaican wife, and becoming an “adopted” West Indian. The great man’s charisma was that strong. That was in 1961 and two years later I had a ringside press seat for Worrell’s triumphant tour of England in a series which is still regarded as being the most exciting, sporting and harmonious ever played in this country. It included the memorable drawn Test at Lord’s, when all four results were possible until the next to last ball of the match, which has passed into legend.
A world opened up for me which extended beyond cricket. I have had the opportunity to report boxing up to world heavyweight championship level, international football and netball, world championship track and field athletics, and much else. Perhaps nothing, outside of cricket, matches the impact of the Athletics World Championships 2009 in Berlin, one of my favourite cities. That was the meeting in which the Jamaicans prevailed – none more so than maestro Usain Bolt. It was the apex of even his ultra-triumphant career. The Germans pronounce the word “gold” as “gol-t” and placards everywhere proclaimed the slogan “Bolt, Gol-t”. Jamaican banners flooded the streets and the subway, as they had once done for cricket just a few years earlier. And in athletics – at the time of writing – they are still flying.
Even away from the arenas of sport I have had the chance to report great events. The two that stand strongest in my memory are sitting in the Central Court of the Old Bailey during the trial of Peter Sutcliffe, the so-called Yorkshire Ripper, with the months of related coverage which went before and after the event, and flying unexpectedly into the Crisis and American-led military intervention in Grenada in 1983. Hector Wynter, Group Editor of Gleaner Newspapers, kindly commissioned me as a roving reporter while hostilities lasted. There have been also interviews with statesmen from Michael Manley and P.J. Patterson to President Hoyte of Guyana, and meeting a host of lovely ladies in a beauty contest industry which has thrived in every generation. Today I can sit back and follow the career of my own grand-daughter, Vivien Parsons, the GB national amateur featherweight boxing champion, and my son, noted film costume designer Rob Goodwin.
How much of that was in my mind when my fingers picked out the first words on my type-writer on 1st June 1976? Not too much. I was just too happy to be alive and doing the job I loved. I remember colleague Rodney Hinds, Sports Editor of The Voice newspaper, once answering a question as to what it was like to be a journalist. He replied: “It has been a privilege”. And so it has been. That sums it up. There is not much money in journalism, you will not become rich by writing, but there are the people, the places, the events …. And the memories. Thank you for letting me share some of them with you today.