Sir Everton Weekes, who died earlier this week at the age of 95, holds the still unbeaten record of five successive centuries in test cricket. Almost certainly, there would have been a sixth, if a controversial run-out decision had not prematurely ended his innings on a score of 90. This magnificent record was set during the 1948-49 West Indies tour of India and the run out was in the Madras test. Weekes’s average on that tour was 111.28.
His overall test average was 58.61, with 4,455 runs in 48 tests. If the numbers are spectacular, so too were the performances at the crease where Weekes accumulated them. Spectacular and hugely entertaining, cricket historian Gerald Broadbibb places him alongside Don Bradman and Dennis Compton in the bracket of those who scored at nearly 50 runs an hour.
Everton Weekes in full flow. Photo courtesy Vic Marks, The Wisden Illustrated History of Cricket.
Weekes is inevitably remembered as part of ‘The Three Ws’ of the West Indies with Frank Worrell and Clyde Walcott, all from Barbados. The triumvirate was 3, 4 and 5 in the batting order and gave the Caribbean middle order substantial ballast. The three are also key to the sociological histories of cricket. Worrell was the first black captain of the West Indies (in 1961, three years after Weekes retired), while later in his life Walcott became the first non-white chair of the International Cricket Council (ICC). Weekes himself remained an avid watcher of the game and had notable stints as a cricket coach (for the Barbados government), commentator, and match referee.
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The place of the three Ws in the West Indian popular imagination is captured best by a story the historian Ramachandra Guha relates:
“One of my favourite cricket stories is of the Archbishop of Canterbury going to preach in the Anglican Cathedral in Bridgetown. He began by saying: “I am going to speak to you about the three Ws”. A great cheer went up from the audience. But then he said, “Yes the three Ws – Work, Worship and Witness”, whereupon half the crowd walked out.”
“Weekes was without question the best of the three Ws as a batsman” adds Guha. “India in 1948 saw him at his best. An uncle who saw him bat in Madras remembered above all, his savage square cutting.”
The Three Ws: (L to R) Frank Worrell, Cyde Walcott and Everton Weekes. Photo: Twitter/@windiescricket
Sir Garfield Sobers reckons that of the three, as a player, “Everton was marginally the best.” The early part of Sobers’ career was played when the Ws were at their peak. A chapter in Sobers’ autobiography is dedicated to ‘The three WS’. Frank Worrell, “elegant, beautiful and very controlled” was never comfortable with the short pitched delivery and the quick bouncer. “Not taking full control of the short-pitched delivery from really quick balls counted against him”, Everton could do that; it didn’t matter what you bowled to him. He had good technique, was a good hooker and had good defence. That was why for me he was just about the best of the three and was probably one of the best batsmen the West Indies ever produced. ‘Clyde Walcott was “a superb hooker” and “was something special on bad wickets” but he did not have “the range of shots nor the full control that Everton had”.
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Everton Weekes gave Sobers his first bat. There was, says Sobers, only one bone of contention between them, a slight misunderstanding in their running between wickets, for Weekes was run out several times during their stands together:
“There was a particular shot he played to mid-wicket. He would immediately call for a run and take off down the wicket. I would be watching and occasionally I would start off too late or say ‘no’ and he would finish up at the wrong end. But, typical of the man, he never showed any resentment or tried to offload the blame on me.”
The fellow Ws recognised his special abilities too. Worrell’s advice to Weekes not to hit the ball so hard that the fielders even gave up the attempt to chase and thus escaped tiring themselves out, was only partially in jest.
Admiration was aplenty in the opposition camp too. During the 1950 tour of England, when the West Indies recorded a historic series win of 3-1, the Barbadian racked up five scores of over two hundred against the counties, including a 304 against Cambridge. This was topped with a test hundred and three fifties.
From the sports pages of the Sunderland Echo, July 25, 1960
After his 279 against Nottinghamshire, former England cricketer, George Gunn, said, of Weekes, ‘I have seen them all since Victor Trumper and including Bradman; I have never seen a more brilliant array of strokes nor heard the ball so sweetly struck’.
Harold Pinter in a whimsical and alluring piece titled ‘Hutton and the Past’, describes the batting of Walcott and Weekes during the fourth test of the 1950 tour of England. On Weekes he writes, “No sixes, nothing off the ground. Weekes smashed, red-eyed, past cover, smashed to long leg, at war, met Gladwin head on, split midwicket in two, steel.” The visualisation is not of any one or another shot but of a lasting essence of quality, and of determination. Weekes went on to score a hundred in that innings.
Michael Manley’s account of an over by the great Alec Bedser in the same innings highlights Everton Weekes’s cerebral finesse. Weekes was on 90 at the start of the over. He defended the first two balls, and then Bedser opted to bowl with a new ball that had become available. A square cut, a back-foot drive, and another square cut was the fate of the next three deliveries. Each shot ending at the boundary and Weekes reaching 102.
The threatening bowler and the pitch are sized up. Then, the changed ball factored in. A (likely) planned onslaught, that also showed off some back-foot mastery.
Cover of Picture Post magazine, 1950, with Frank Worrell and Everton Weekes (right), going out to bat.
Cultural historian and cricket writer C.L.R. James too spoke of the Barbadian’s technical nous. James notes the difficulty of playing fast bowling with a wicket-keeper standing up to the stumps, with other close-in fielders also around. In particular, James had in mind the lethal Australian combination of fast bowler George John and the six footer wicket-keeper Piggott looming behind the stumps – such a field could throw many a batsman off his game. Yet, Everton Weekes he says, ‘plays as usual, keeping the ball down as usual, placing it as usual. Long may his method flourish!’
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Without a doubt, Weekes was one of the finest to have played the game. In these accounts he appears as a complete batsman. Pleasing to the eye, entertaining, temperamentally and technically sound. And then, he had courage. In 1957 , the West Indies toured England and lost the series 3-0. A report of a match in that series by Ralph Hadley in the British newspaper The People, is one of West Indian defeat after all their batsmen collapsed, except for Weekes and a young Sobers. Yet this account of West Indian defeat reads like a piece dedicated to Weekes’s indomitable spirit, and virtuosity.
Of his batting under tremendous pressure Hadley writes, “[It] is Weekes who I am making the champion of them all. He came in at 12.30 with the score 80 for four. Exactly half an hour later he had 30 runs against his number on the scoreboard’ and goes on to describe the team reaching hundred: the “two successive fours with which he put up 100, the first a superb cover drive and the second a leg glide. And two more successive fours in another over a few minutes later.”
“Sir Everton will have many accolades written about him, all deserved as he was a legend, both on and off the field. What I will remember about him is his humility,” Michael Holding told The Wire. “He always had a smile for everyone and would put you at ease immediately, and it didn’t matter who was around him or what environment he was in. Indeed, that was my experience with him every time I had the pleasure of interacting with him over the years. There were times when people would avoid me because of something I said publicly or a stance I took with which they did not agree but Sir Everton would always have a smile and a ‘hello Mikey’ when I greeted him. I am privileged to have known him. I will never forget his ready smile, steady words and how much he gave to us all.”
As I go through accounts and descriptions, I feel as if I know Weekes’s batting better than any contemporary cricketer I’ve seen. Visualising his game, I am not just the spectator glued to a screen. I am the bowler who got hit, the fielder who didn’t need to chase the ball, the champion batsman, and the audience, in my own personal theatre.
Like Guha’s uncle, who saw Weekes bat in Madras and remembered above all his savage square cutting, I can now imagine his square cuts. This makes me marvel at how Weekes, and other cricketers of bygone eras, remain alive as memories. Memories one never personally had, but inherited. A cricketing history is thus passed on.
It seems to me that while we may grieve Weekes’s passing, it once again presents to us the opportunity to visualise the game in our minds, and see it play out in the stadia of dreams. To meditate on the sheer skill of the writers that have keep him immortal. As the modern cricketer is more and more documented by a visual medium, the necessity to write down a player’s brilliance seems less urgent. Cricket careers and exploits are now less likely to be as delightfully described as Weekes’s has been. Long may the evocative batting that inspired such prose live.
Special thanks to Ramchandra Guha and Nitya Ramakrishnan for their inputs
Anushrut Ramakrishnan Agrwaal is a doctoral student in film history at St Andrews University
This article was updated after publication to add Michael Holding’s quote