My Song Shall Be Cricket

Franklyn Stephenson

Description

One of cricket's great characters, Franklyn Stephenson was branded a 'rebel' for touring in apartheid South Africa with a West Indian XI. As a black sportsman, he knew his actions went against the wishes of the authorities and that there would be consequences, yet he overcame the character slurs and subsequent bans from both his beloved Barbados and the West Indian Test selectors. Recognised as the first fast bowler to develop a cunning slower ball, Stephenson became one of the world's top all-rounders. The beaming Barbadian achieved cricketing immortality in 1988 by completing the domestic Double of scoring 1,000 runs and taking 100 wickets during an English summer - a feat that is unlikely to be repeated. Read about encounters, on and off the field, with household names such as Viv Richards, Andy Roberts, Clive Lloyd and Desmond Haynes - and a lifelong friendship with Sir Garfield Sobers. From a childhood full of dramatic life experiences to the heights of one-day finals at Lord's, here is the story of an amiable cricketing giant.

Sujets

• Críquet
• Cricket

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 27 juillet 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785315879
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2019
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Franklyn Stephenson and Dave Bracegirdle, 2019
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 978-1-78531-539-8 eBook ISBN 978-1-78531-587-9
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Contents
Foreword by Sir Garfield Sobers
Introduction
1. Village Life
2. Life Lessons
3. On the Front Foot
4. The Greatest
5. The Leagues of Lancashire
6. Julia Benjamin-Stephenson
7. Tasmania
8. It Talked
9. That Man Collis
10. Whispers
11. It is Going to Happen
12. Rebel Tour Part One
13. A Friendly Too Far
14. Rebel Tour Part Two
15. Too Hot to Handle
16. Teeing Off
17. Joining Notts
18. The Double
19. Eddie s Carve
20. Old Foes
21. Gripped by Malcolm
22. Free State, Memorable Games
23. Highest Score
24. Moving to Sussex
25. Stumps are Drawn
26. Looking Ahead
Synopsis
Franklyn Stephenson - Statistics
Acknowledgements
Photo Credits
Foreword by Sir Garfield Sobers
I HAVE followed Franklyn Stephenson s career closely and was delighted when asked to write a few words about him for this book.
It s no exaggeration to say he was always a little headstrong; some would perhaps say that he had a bit of an attitude. But Franky has always done what he considered to be right for himself and for his family, and I commend him for that.
Circumstances prevented him from playing at the very highest level of the game but a glance at the record books confirms what an outstanding cricketer he was.
He faced up to every challenge put before him and he is recognised by his peers as being one of the most competitive players to have graced our game.
I played my county cricket for Nottinghamshire, so when Franky joined them in 1988 I looked on with pride. His achievement in that season of completing the English f1irst-class double of scoring 1,000 runs and taking 100 wickets was an extraordinary feat.
As an all-rounder myself, I know how difficult that was to accomplish and I doubt whether it will ever be repeated.
Over the last two decades Franky and I have played countless rounds of golf together. I have to report that he is even more competitive on the golf course than he was as a cricketer!
Franky s cricket academy in Barbados is now helping many youngsters pursue their interest in the game and we hope that it will enable future stars to emerge and represent the island and ultimately the West Indies.
I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and hope you will too.
Go well, Franklyn!
Your friend,
Sir G
Introduction
M Y NAME is Franklyn Dacosta Stephenson and this is my story. Those who may have heard my name in the past may have done so for one of two reasons. Some people have referred to me as a rebel , a name that was given to all overseas sportsmen who chose to visit and play in South Africa during the years of apartheid.
Others, perhaps chiefly the cricket-loving supporters among you, may know me as (to date) the last man to do the double - the feat of scoring over 1,000 runs and taking 100 wickets in first-class cricket in the same English season.
While I am proud - immensely proud - of everything I have achieved, there is more to my story than just these two periods in my life and I feel that now is the time to tell it.
If I am to be labelled a rebel, then at least know that I am a rebel with a cause. I went to South Africa because, as you will read, I felt it was the right thing for me to do at the time.
Others didn t agree and a period of being ignored by the selectors of both Barbados and the West Indies ensued. There was never any official word coming from the West Indies board to say that I was banned for life, it was just a statement that I d heard, something that was going around.
You re not involved, you re not being selected.
Without any official notification from anyone, most of it was just speculation, leaving me to presume that as I wasn t being selected I was banned from playing - perhaps for life.
I know statements were made about it but they weren t spoken in my presence. The board couldn t have guaranteed that I would have read them in the media or received notification from the media.
It just seemed to be a given that I was banned. Banned from representing my own country.
That s the viciousness of it, really, because they had no legal leg to stand on, but when I wasn t being picked for Barbados there was no way I could be picked for the West Indies.
In effect, the ban was an effort to curtail my earning power.
My job was playing cricket; there wasn t another job available to me. It was just like that. I couldn t walk into someone s office and pick up another job, so the guys that enacted this ban made it a life ban as well. There was no turning back.
It was a very vicious thing to do.
England had experienced a similar thing and banned their players for a period of three years. Australia, in effect, banned their players for two years and these guys in the Caribbean - these demigods in the Caribbean - considered that they were going to show the world how militant they were and they imposed a life ban on us.
When making the decision to go to South Africa I had clarity in my mind about what I needed to do - what we had an opportunity to do - and I think that history has proved us right.
Those who judged us never looked back afterwards or said that they were wrong - or that they were too damned anything - they just sauntered on with their lives.
When you look at West Indies cricket and see how it has fallen so quickly from the pinnacle to the nadir of the world game, it can t be just that the players became poor players overnight.
It was a blight, it was a sentence that West Indies cricket served as a result of what they did to the players, because from then on, in my estimation, West Indies cricket fell off its perch and into a murky abyss.
When the big collapse happened, when the greats of the game retired, there was nothing coming through to replace them. The whole middle had been taken out.
They ll look back and say that the majority of the players that went to South Africa were past their best and had been dropped from the West Indies team, but there was one player, the youngest player in that team, who hadn t played a game yet.
For 15 years I was able to dominate wherever I played and whoever I came up against. Records and statistics show that, for the period in which I played, I always came out on top.
I went into county cricket, showed myself and played all those representative games and so on, but then not to have played for the West Indies well it was their choice.
This is my side of things, my song - and My Song Shall Be Cricket.
CHAPTER ONE
Village Life
I WAS born on 8 April 1959 to Violet Stevenson and Leonard Young in Hall s Village, a small community situated in the parish of St James in Barbados.
My dad already had two boys, named Leon and Theodore Ward, before he met my mom and she already had Charles, popularly known as Bronson , before she met my father.
Soon they had their first born together, a girl who was christened Angella Patricia. Apparently, my dad wanted to call her Pauline but wasn t allowed to. He carried on calling her that anyway and over time the name stuck - she s always been my sister Pauline.
I really don t know of any significance in me being named Franklyn Dacosta. No parallels have ever been drawn and frankly I never cared to ask.
My dad s full name was Leonard Bruce Young and my earliest memories of growing up in the village - the Youngs are a significant part of its history - are as a Stephenson. Back then it was natural that if the parents weren t married the children took the mother s surname.
That was a good ploy: men who wanted their children to have their surname had to man up to the responsibility and marry their lady. Today that has changed, however, and every young man fathering a child out of wedlock is insisting that the child has his surname.
You might note a difference in the spelling of my mother s surname and mine. That happened years later when I went to get my birth and baptism certificates in order to apply for my passport. My birth certificate stated Stephenson with a ph but my baptism certificate had it with a v . I understood that the birth certificate carried more weight and using the ph spelling saved me any hassle. Mom just passed it off by saying that some of her documents were that way as well and that there was no bother in her mind.
I don t actually remember my parents living together but from as early as five or six years old it was decided that I should be the one to live with my father. By this time my mom had another two children, Jonathan Ezekiel and Margaret Cerlene.
Dad lived on his own in a small, two-roomed, single-gable building which was owned by old Ma King , who was actually first cousin to my great-grandmother, Feenie Forde. It was situated in the back - or, as you would say in Bajan parlance, behind de pailin of Chessie and Lolita King .
Research shows that the Fordes (nee Kings) are direct descendants of Jacqueline King, who is logged as the first freed slave in Barbados.
The Kings had four daughters and two sons and then there was also Ismay, an older girl, who was pretty much like a nanny. Their