The Famous Barbadian Cricketers

You can­not go any­where in Bar­ba­dos, and even the Caribbean for that mat­ter, and not feel the pas­sion we have for Cricket. Bar­ba­dos has always had a renowned rep­u­ta­tion for pro­duc­ing stel­lar crick­eters. His­tor­i­cally, Bar­ba­di­ans have played a great role in West Indies cricket as well as inter­na­tion­ally. Select from the list to learn more about some of these great players. Let’s exploce The Famous Barbadian Cricketers below.

The Famous Barbadian Cricketers

Desmond Leo Haynes

Born on Feb­ru­ary 15, 1956, Desmond Haynes is with­out a doubt one of Bar­ba­dos, great­est con­tri­bu­tions to the West Indies Team. He is known as one of the finest open­ing bats­men in the his­tory of cricket. Grow­ing up, it was quickly realised that he had tremen­dous apti­tude for the sport. He started play­ing for the Bar­ba­dos cricket team in 1976 at a young 20 years, and it was only 2 years later in Feb­ru­ary 1978 that he had his One Day Inter­na­tional debut for the West Indies. This is once of The Famous Barbadian Cricketers.
At this One Day, Haynes bat­ted a notable 148 off 136balls the high­est ever score for a One Day Inter­na­tional debut and the high­est ever score at the Re creation Ground in a One Day Inter­na­tional. His records still stand to this day. The 1980s saw him form a for­mi­da­ble part­ner ship with fe ­low West Indies open­ing bats­man, Gor­don Greenidge.

Cuth­bert Gor­den Greenidge

Gor­don Greenidge was born on May 1, 1951 in Bar­ba­dos where there was a love, zeal and pas­sion for cricket. He later moved to Read­ing, UK in 1965 with his par­ents, and quickly became a mid­dle order bats­man for his school, Sut­ton Sec­ondary School. Admit­tedly a lousy fielder, in the begin­ning, Greenidge admits that he was only inter­ested in bat­ting. He realised that he quickly needed to mas­ter this side of cricket in order to progress in the game.
He took to run­ning the streets of Southamp­ton past mid­night in an effort to get fit­ter. This cer­tainly paid of, as Greenidge is ranked as one of crickets best field­ers in the world. With his increased suc­cesses and per­sonal achieve­ments, it soon became quite clear that Gor­den Greenidge was Test mate­r­ial. After some spec­u­la­tion on whether he would go on to play for Eng land, or the West Indies. He later chose the West Indies cit­ing the need “to see what cricket was like back home and to try my luck” Between the two of them they made 16 cen tury stands, four in excess of 200 and a com­bined total of 6482 runs the high­est total for a bat­ting part­ner­ship in Test cricket history.

Sir Frank Mor­timer Maglinne Worrell

Sir Frank Wor­rell is famously known for two notable life­time achieve ments he was the first black cap­tain of the West Indies cricket team, and he was the only bats­man to have been involved in two 500-run part­ner­ships in first-class cricket. Born August 1, 1929, Wor­rell made his West Indies debut as a player in 1947 to 1948 ver­sus the Eng­land team of Gubby Allen, barely miss­ing a cen­tury on this debut. Around this period, cricket was always cap­tained by a white man.
Wor­rell smashed these colour bar­ri­ers, largely thanks to a cam­paign run by the then edi­tor of The Nation news­pa­per in Trinidad, C. L. R. James. Evi­dence of Worrells human­ity and com­radery was shown when on Feb­ru­ary 3 1962, Nari Con­trac­tor, the cap­tain of the tour­ing Indian team, received a seri­ous career ending head injury from a bouncer bowled by West Indies fast bowler Char­lie Grif­fith. Wor­rell was the first player from both sides who vol­un­teered to give blood in a bid to save Nari’s life. This day is remem­bered by the state of West Ben­gal in India as Sir Frank Wor­rell Day, where every year on this day the Cricket Asso­ci­a­tion of Ben­gal organ­ises a blood dona­tion drive.

Ever­ton DeCourcy Weekes

Born on Feb­ru­ary 26 1925, Ever­ton Weekes later went on to become one of the great 3Ws, who utterly dom­i­nated West Indies Cricket in the 50s. The 3Ws (Sir Frank Wor­rell, Sir Clyde Wal­cott and Sir Ever­ton Weekes) all were born within sev­en­teen months of each other, and within one mile of the famed Kens ing­ton Oval. Inci­den­tally, all three Ws were friends.
The term 3Ws was first coined by a British jour­nal­ist dur­ing the 1950West Indian tour of Eng­land when the trio cer­tainly made quite an impres­sion. In hon our of this amaz­ing trio, the Uni­ver­sity of the West Indies in Bar­ba­dos has a 3Ws Oval, with a 3Ws Mon­u­ment bear­ing the bust of the three leg­ends directlyopposite.