Farewell to Jamaican who played until 85, era of giants at tiny clubs

CEC WRIGHT didn’t know exactly how many wickets he had taken. Though he cherished every one of them, from unknown teenagers to the greats of the game, he had lost count, given how long he’d been playing. He was still going at 85, turning out for the seconds at Uppermill in the Saddleworth League, having cut down his run-up over the years, to 15 paces first of all, then 10, and finally to not much more than a stutter.

There wasn’t anyone in league cricket in Lancashire who didn’t know who Wright was. He’d come over from Jamaica, where he was born in 1933 in the parish of St Elizabeth, and where he was good enough to have played one first-class match against a strong Barbados side that included Test stars Seymour Nurse and Wes Hall. In a heavy innings defeat, he didn’t take a wicket, and scored only one run. But it was in league cricket in England, not first-class cricket in the Caribbean, where he made his mark.

He came to Lancashire in 1959 on the recommendation of Roy Gilchrist, the Jamaican and West Indies fast bowler, who was also a stalwart of the northern leagues. He ended up staying for good, marrying and working local for the rest of his life. He played for Crompton Cricket Club, initially, in the Central Lancashire League, where things didn’t go brilliantly at first and needed some advice from the great Frank Worrell, who played at Radcliffe, about how to bowl on slop and mud, rather than the hard, baked pitches he was used to. Things went much better after that.

He played for Colne Cricket Club then, in the Lancashire League, and in his first year for the club in 1965, the roll call of his fellow professionals was quite something. There were Lester King and Chester Watson, Jamaica and West Indies players both, playing for Rawtenstall and Church; Johnny Wardle, Yorkshire and England, was at Rishton; Pakistan’s Saeed Ahmed was at Nelson; and Tony Lock, Surrey and England, was at Ramsbottom. Thousands turned out to watch each week, making bonuses worthwhile for a five-wicket haul when the cap was taken around for a collection.

STRONGEST LINK

There were other, less-heralded first-class cricketers, too, dotted about. Sylvester Oliver and Pascall Roberts, both from Trinidad, were at Lowerhouse and Todmorden; Duncan Carter, Barbados, and Keith Barker, who played for Guyana, were at Burnley and Enfield. Although the professionals came from all over – there were two first-class cricketers from Australia that year, too – it was the Caribbean link that was strongest of all in the Lancashire leagues.

It is hard to think now, given the economic decline of these once mighty mill towns, just how vibrant these community cricket clubs once were, with thousands watching some of the best players in the world on a weekly basis. Early British Film Institute footage from the turn of the 20th century of a match between Church and Accrington shows a huge social occasion with formal dress the order of the day.

Learie Constantine, one of the most significant of all cricketers, broke the mould for overseas professionals in the leagues. It has been written that when he signed for Nelson in 1929 it would have been like Lionel Messi signing for Accrington Stanley now, but Nelson was a prosperous place then, had a football team good enough to have beaten Real Madrid in a pre-season friendly in 1923, and they were willing to pay Constantine more than Jack Hobbs was getting at Surrey.

Even so, there were barriers to overcome. When he arrived in Nelson, the rag and bone man was the only other black man in the town and, as Harry Pearson wrote in his wonderful biography of Constantine, Connie, the children from the school opposite would peer in through the windows of the small terrace and, given the chance, would ask him whether the colour of his skin was from working down the mines.

These questions, wrote Pearson, were from “a curiosity born of ignorance” rather than racism. Constantine came to cherish his time in Nelson, taking his title in the House of Lord’s partly from that town, and Nelson came to cherish him like no other. “For every one insult, there were 10,000 expressions of warmth and friendship towards me,” he later said. Where Constantine led, Wright and many others followed.

STRONG BONDS

Although the way had been paved, and any curiosity born of ignorance had subsided by the late 1950s, some prejudice remained. Wright’s wife, Enid, told the journalist Bharat Sundaresan how they met at a West Indian club in Manchester. “They wouldn’t allow black people in pubs. I had this friend whose husband was from Saint Helena and they decided to start one for people of colour. I got roped in and went to a dance where I saw Cec, and the rest is history.”

Through cricket, the bonds that tied these professionals to their communities were strong. Clive Lloyd, who played for Haslingden, settled in the North West, as did Sonny Ramadhin, the mystery spinner from Trinidad. After Wright married Enid, they had children, settled in Royton, and he continued to play in the leagues around Lancashire and North Manchester until his ninth decade, retiring finally in 2019, telling local reporters: “I am going to miss something that I have loved all through my life.”

With the flowers now starting to bloom, the soil starting to warm, and the season just a week away, Wright died on Sunday, at age 92. For the most part, his league career (and life in the small towns of Lancashire) reflects a time that has passed, one when these tiny cricket clubs could call on the greats of the day. Even as late as 1987, Rishton signed Viv Richards, who was still captain of West Indies at the time.

Yet the thread has not been completely broken. On the eve of the season, Norden Cricket Club of the Lancashire League announced the signing of Jermaine Blackwood, a diminutive dasher and a veteran of 56 Tests for West Indies. Like Wright, Blackwood was born in the parish of St Elizabeth, and when he arrives in the North West he will have travelled a path taken by Wright almost 70 years earlier. He won’t get as many wickets, though. Not many did.