(Part II)
By Winston McGowan
The most satisfying achievement of cricketers worldwide arguably is the scoring of their first Test century. Many of them never score another Test hundred. Among this large group of players who have made only a single Test century in their career are 32 West Indians, including six Guyanese.
These six players in alphabetical order are Faoud Bacchus, Leonard Baichan, Robert Christiani, Clayton Lambert, Bruce Pairaudeau and Joe Solomon. The initial instalment of this article focused on Christiani, the first Guyanese to make a Test century – 107 against India at Delhi in November, 1948, twenty years after the West Indies began to play Test cricket. This second instalment will focus on Pairaudeau.
Bruce Hamilton Pairaudeau was a stylish, orthodox, bespectacled right-handed opening batsman who sometimes batted in the middle order. As a youth attending secondary school he seemed to possess prodigious talent which enabled him to make his first-class debut for British Guiana against Trinidad in March 1947, a month before his sixteenth birthday. In these two games at the Queen’s Park Oval he failed dismally, recording scores of 18 and 8 and 1 and 4. In his next intercolonial game six months later, however, he redeemed himself by scoring a century (130) against Jamaica at Bourda at the age of only 16 years and five months.
Many Guyanese felt that Pairaudeau was unfortunate not to have been selected on the West Indies team which toured England in 1950 just after he made a century (161) against Barbados at Kensington Oval. Eventually, after outstanding success in the Lancashire League and three impressive innings (77 and 101 and 126) in two matches against Jamaica at Bourda in October 1952, he was able to force his way into the West Indies team for the first Test against India at the Queen’s Park Oval in January 1953. One Guyanese commentator described Pairaudeau’s selection as “more like postponed justice.”
Pairaudeau was the only Guyanese in the team and one of three West Indian Test debutants, the others being Frank King, the Barbadian fast bowler, and Alfred Binns, the Jamaican wicket-keeper. The match was historic in several ways. It was the first time the Caribbean was hosting an Indian team and the first occasion the West Indies was involved in a Test of six days’ duration. Furthermore, a crowd of 22,000, then a record for a cricket match in the Caribbean, watched Pairaudeau when he began his first Test innings late on the third day.
In that innings Pairaudeau, then only 21 years old, had the distinction of scoring a century (115). He became only the third West Indian to score a first-appearance Test hundred, following the example set by the legendary Jamaican, George Headley (176), in 1930 and the Trinidadian, Andrew Ganteume (112), in 1948, both against England in the Caribbean. The Guyanese press hailed Pairaudeau’s achievement, with the Daily Argosy having as its headline, “Pairaudeau Carves Name in ‘Hall of Fame’ With First Appearance 100”.Pairaudeau became the first of only three Guyanese to perform this comparatively rare feat, the others being Alvin Kallicharran (100 not out) against New Zealand in 1972 at Bourda and Leonard Baichan (105 not out) against Pakistan at Lahore in 1975.
Pairaudeau, batting at Number 6 because of the presence of the established openers, Jeffrey Stollmeyer and Allan Rae, came to the wicket with his team’s score at 190 for 4 in reply to India’s first innings total of 417. These two openers, Frank Worrell and Clyde Walcott were already back in the pavilion when Pairaudeau joined Everton Weekes.
Pairaudeau opened his account with a fierce pull for four off a short-pitched ball from the world-class leg spinner, Subhash Gupte. He proceeded to delight the spectators with exhilarating drives. Admittedly he profited from one chance when on 82, he was dropped by wicket-keeper Padmanabh Joshi, trying to tickle the medium-paced opening bowler, Gulabrai Ramchand, to leg.
Pairaudeau and Weekes shared a substantial partnership of 219 runs which was historic in at least three ways. Firstly, it eclipsed the fifth-wicket record of 170 for the West Indies against India set by Weekes and Christiani at Bombay in 1948. The new record was to remain for 49 years, that is, until 2002 when the Guyanese, Carl Hooper (233) and Shivnarine Chanderpaul (140), had a stand of 293 for that wicket at Bourda in the first Test of a series. Secondly, the partnership between Pairaudeau and Weekes was a fifth-wicket record for the West Indies in all Tests until then. Thirdly, it was a record for the ground for that wicket and remained so for 56 years, that is, until Chanderpaul (147 not out) and Brendan Nash (109) surpassed it with a stand of 234 against England earlier this year.
The partnership between Weekes and Pairaudeau was broken with the score at 409 when the Barbadian was dismissed for 207, the first of his two Test double centuries. The team then collapsed, routed by Gupte, the last five wickets falling for the addition of only 29 runs. Pairaudeau, who was 94 when Weekes was out, saw the all-rounder Gerry Gomez (0), Binns (2) and King (0) dismissed quickly and had to wait for the tail-ender, Sonny Ramadhin, to help him reach his coveted hundred. When he was dismissed finally, stumped on 115 gunning for the bowling, the entire ground rose and cheered him as he made his way back to the pavilion. His brilliant knock was only the second century by a Guyanese in Test cricket, following on the heels of Christiani’s innings, just over four years before.
Although Pairaudeau continued to score fairly heavily for British Guiana, his subsequent Test career was extremely disappointing. When he represented the West Indies against England at home in 1954, in England in 1957 and in New Zealand in 1956, his scores in these Tests were 71, 0 and 5, 0 and 13, 68 and 8, 9 and 3, 1 and 7, 6 and 6.
Pairaudeau’s involvement in Caribbean cricket ended in 1958 when he migrated permanently to New Zealand, where he still resides. There he represented Northern Districts in the Plunkett Shield for eight seasons until 1967.
Bruce Pairaudeau never fulfilled his early promise and the high expectations created by his first-appearance Test hundred. In his entire career he played only 13 Tests, scoring 454 runs, including one century and three fifties, in 21 innings with a poor average of 21.61 runs an innings.
