Sheffield Cricket Lovers' Society Year Book 2020

46 twitter: @scloverssociety In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s the leading Lancashire league sides would have overseas professionals playing for them, many of them top Test cricketers. My source of cricket information at that time was the Playfair Cricket Annual with the crests of the then 17 First Class Counties adorning its front cover. My 1950 edition noted that Everton Weekes was the professional for Bacup in 1949 and two League records fell to him that year. He beat the previous aggregate record by scoring 1,470 runs in the season and hit 195 in an innings, beating what was then the highest recorded League score of 188. In 1951, a year after the 1950 tour of England, he returned to play for Bacup again. Sixty years on, when not playing Test cricket players of the calibre of Steve Smith play in the EFL in India. Within the last year Smith captained the Rajasthan Royals in India as well as playing for the Sydney Sixers in Australia. Hiis skills probably earned him £1m or thereabouts. What would Weekes have earned if he had been playing now? One can only guess. In his day in the Lancashire League £1,500 was a good reward for a season’s work. Weekes played 48 Test Matches between 1947-57 and scored 4,455 runs, including 15 centuries at an average of 58.61. By the end of the 2018 season Steve Smith had 64 Tests to his name and had scored 6,199 runs, including 23 Test centuries at an average of 61.37. In January 2017, I visited Bacup in the hope of finding out a little about Weekes’ time there and meeting anyone who might have remembered him. The cricket ground is situated on the top of a hill and would have been pretty breezy on certain days, a far cry from Weekes’ home island of Barbados. We were fortunate to be guided to a small terrace house with a cricket cup in the window, and even more so when a gentleman opened the door and invited me in having heard my introductory blurb. He sat me down, went upstairs and produced a scrapbook which had been kept by his mother. His father had been Treasurer of Bacup Cricket Club when Weekes was playing. On the first page was a signed picture of the great man and the book also contained press cuttings from the 50’s, detailing Weekes’ highpoints whilst playing for the WI. He informed us that Weekes had been in Bacup the year before, after turning 90, visiting friends from his time playing there. This says something of the man. I returned home and contacted a secretary at Lord’s cricket ground who I knew, asking if she would forward a letter to Sir Everton in which I was requesting his autograph and relaying to him a short part of what I have written above. A month later an envelope with a large Barbados stamp dropped through our letterbox. Inside was the single sheet of paper which I had enclosed and which Weekes had signed in three places. This will always remain a treasured possession to go with the signatures I had of the other two great W’s. In the early 1950’s, Frank Worrall had signed my autograph book during a cricket week held at my local Parkhead Club in Sheffield. In 1991 Clyde Walcott signed my score card at Lord’s when he was manager of the WI touring team. I end by asking the question whether the five consecutive centuries scored by Weekes in 1948-49 will ever be bettered. I have my doubts, for it was a formidable achievement and it will take a very special batsman with superb powers of concentration, a rock-solid technique and a fair share of luck to achieve this. Even Steve Smith of current day players has been unable to do so. On the bowling front it is equally unlikely that Jim Laker’s 19 wickets taken in the 1956 Manchester Test Match against Australia will ever be equalled. It is important that such stupendous cricketing feats are not forgotten in the mists of time. I count myself lucky to have been alive when both were achieved. John Hopkins