In this week’s edition of In Search of West Indies Cricket, Roger Seymour recounts a Test match played during the Season of Christmas.
The journey
On 25th October, 1950, the West Indies Cricket Board of Control (WICBC) accepted an invitation from the Australian Cricket Board (ACB) for the West Indies to visit Australia during the next season. The offer arrived hard on the heels of the team’s departure from England on 23rd September, following their 3 – 1 conquest. The team for the 1951/52 Tour of Australia and New Zealand was selected after the Quadrangular Tournament in mid-March and announced on 27th April, after the WICBC’s proposal for fees and expenses had been accepted by the professional players engaged in League Cricket in England.
The tour party departed for Australia in three separate groups. The first batch comprising Barbadians Captain John Goddard and Denis Atkinson; Trinidadians Cyril Merry (Manager), Sam Guillen, Prior Jones, and Wilf Ferguson; British Guiana players Robert Christiani and John Trim, left Trinidad on 30th August, aboard the ‘S S Akaora’. On 8th September, the ship arrived in Colon at the end of the Panama Canal, where they were joined by Alf Valentine, who had flown from Jamaica. On 24th September, ‘Akaora’ docked in New Zealand. Three days later, the team boarded the ‘S S Wanganella’, traversed the Tasman Sea, arriving in Sydney on 1st October.