Tour of Australia 1960-61               Captain: Frank Worrell

West Indies eleventh Test tour

Third Test-playing tour of Australia by West Indies

 (October 1960 –

          February 1961)

Frank Worrell’s elevation to the West Indies’ captaincy was the culmination of a movement running since the 1920s which gave expression to anti-colonial sentiment. It campaigned that leadership and management should be based on merit rather than race and class.

His becoming captain coincided with the political collapse of the West Indian Federation. In spite of this. Worrell became an inspiring representative of pride in single nationhood in the region. With his decency and dignified manner, he brought the players together into a team as never before.

The five-match Test series produced some fantastic cricket situations, including the celebrated tied Test at Brisbane and two other nail-biting finishes. The fifth Test might have been won by West Indies or perhaps become another tie, had the umpire not ruled against Grout being bowled by Valentine when a bail was found on the floor with three runs to win. 

It looked as if cricket had turned a corner after the dreary Test rubbers played in the late 1950s; this tour and England 1963 raised hopes that brighter cricket had come to stay, but no other series throughout the sixties approached them in terms of excitement.

Forty years later the 20 survivors of the tied Test encounter (Grout and Worrell having died in the meantime) gathered in Brisbane to celebrate the anniversary and mark the start of the 2000/01 contest between the two sides.

Other West Indies tours

Previous tour

Pakistan 1959

Next tour

England 1963

Next tour of Australia  

1968-69

Members of the Test tour party

(17)

Opening batsmen:  Conrad Hunte, Cammie Smith.

Middle-order batsmen  Rohan Kanhai, Peter Lashley, Seymour Nurse, Gary Sobers, Joe Solomon, Frank Worrell.

Wicket-keepers: Gerry Alexander, Jackie Hendriks

Spin bowlers Lance Gibbs, Sonny Ramadhin, Alf Valentine

Fast bowlers Tom Dewdney, Wesley Hall, Chester Watson.

B - Barbados (6)

BG - British Guiana (3)

Ja - Jamaica (6)

T - Trinidad (1)

Average age of  team at time of first Test match

(9 December 1960) :

 27 yrs  10 months

Test Appearances made before the tour

Ramadhin 41,  Worrell 36,  Sobers 32,  Valentine 29,  Alexander 20,  Kanhai 20,  Hunte 16,  Hall 13,  Dewdney 9,  Solomon 9,  Gibbs 8,  Watson 5,  Nurse 1,  Hendriks 0,  Lashley 0,  CW Smith 0.

Tour Officials

Max Marshall was a former first-class player with Trinidad. He dealt with the financial matters. He played in one match on the Tasmanian section of the tour, while manager Gerry Gomez was captain in some of the country fixtures.

Selectors

Gerry Gomez (Trinidad - chairman),  Berkeley Gaskin (British Guiana),  John Goddard (Barbados),  Frank  Worrell and Gerry Alexander (both Jamaica).

Selection

Gerry Alexander, the incumbent who had led West Indies against England in 1960, asked not to be considered for the captaincy.

The captain and the manager's names were announced on 18 March 1960.

Unavailable:  Clyde Walcott had retired from international cricket.

Tour Party Announced :  31 March 1960  (only 15 names)

The selectors hesitated before choosing a fast bowler for the sixteenth place in the squad. Initially, skipper Frank Worrell hoped to find room in the team for Roy Gilchrist who had returned early in disgrace from the West Indian tour to India two years before but the West Indies Board of Control refused to consider him.  To make matters worse for him, Gilchrist had just been in a car crash, too.

Once Gilchrist's name had been vetoed, the selectors announced on 1 May 1960 that Eric Atkinson would be given the final place in the team. However he could not get time off work and Tom Dewdney was then called up.

Not selected : Basil Butcher (Peter Lashley was preferred to him),  Reg Scarlett,  Chester Watson.

Time between selection and departure from West Indies

 200 days

 (31 March - 14 October)

Travel

KingstonQ New YorkQ Sydney

Tilbury     T    Fremantle

            ‘Strathaird’

Gomez and the four Jamaicans (Alexander, Valentine, Watson, Worrell) flew from Palisados Airport on 14 October to New York where they joined Marshall and six players (Gibbs, Hendriks, Lashley, Nurse, Smith, Solomon). Together they flew from New York, transiting at San Francisco, Honolulu and Nadi Airport, Fiji, before reaching Mascot Airport, Sydney and, after three days of rest, Perth.

The league cricketers from England (Dewdney, Hall, Hunte, Kanhai, Ramadhin and Sobers) left Tilbury on the 'Strathaird' on 13 September.  They were accompanied by the team masseur Alves and reached Fremantle on 11 October.  The complete party assembled at Perth on Wednesday 19 October.

Time spent in Australia

   143 days

(19 October - 24 February)

On-tour selection committee

Worrell,  Alexander,  Ramadhin,  Sobers and Gomez.

Reinforcements

None, apart from getting help from the management team of Gomez and Marshall by playing some matches.

Fixtures/Results

† not first-class

.

Time spent in Australia before First Test:

 49 days

(19 October - 9 December)

Time from end of final Test until departure from Australia  9 days

(15 February - 24 February)

Test appearances on tour

5  -  Alexander,  Hall,  Hunte,  Kanhai,  Sobers,  Solomon,  Valentine,  Worrell.

4  -  Smith

3  -  Gibbs,  Nurse

2  -  Lashley,  Ramadhin

1 -   Watson

0 -   Dewdney,  Hendriks.

Highlights

•   Kanhai played an innings of 252 against Victoria early in the tour. In the fourth Test scored a hundred in each innings.

•   Sobers scored 132 at Brisbane and 168 at Sydney, two centuries that took him past 3000 Test runs

•   Alexander scored his maiden first-class century (108) at Sydney, as well as playing five other innings greater than fifty in the Test series.  Worrell also scored 5 fifties.

•   Gibbs took the hat-trick, dismissing Mackay, Grout and Misson in consecutive balls, at Adelaide. He had already taken three wickets in four balls at Sydney.

•   The second day's play of the final Test at Melbourne attracted a world record crowd of 90 800 people.

Tour Summary

Return to West Indies

SydneyQ   New YorkQ  Jamaica

Fremantle   T    Tilbury

               ‘Strathaird’

It had been planned that Hunte (captain), Sobers, Kanhai, Hall, Nurse, Watson (with Roy Marshall, Sabhash Gupte and three Pakistanis) would make a tour of Rhodesia but this was cancelled.  Then Frank Worrell was supposed to play in the Governor-General's XI in New Zealand but he withdrew owing to a knee injury sustained in the last Test match and Cammie Smith took his place.

On 17 February, two days after the final Test match, the team paraded in a motorcade of open-top cars through Melbourne.    

The tour party broke up on 19 February in Canberra.

(a)  Six of the professional cricketers (Hunte, Sobers, Watson, Kanhai, Nurse and Hall) flew from Canberra at 8 am on 19 February over the Great Australian Bight to Perth.  They took the 'Stratheden' from Fremantle at 10 pm on the night of 20 February 1961. They played a match in Ceylon on 28 February against a Ceylon Mirror XI; and sailed via Bombay, Aden and Athens to Tilbury.

(b)  Ramadhin and Dewdney left Perth for England on 20 February by air.

(c)  Solomon and Gibbs left for the United States on Wednesday 22 February to visit relatives, joining the rest of the team in the USA later. They then went to Trinidad on the afternoon on 28 February en route to Georgetown.

(d)  Alexander and Cammie Smith left on Thursday 23 February for Auckland

(e)  Worrell, Gomez, Marshall, Valentine, Hendriks, Lashley and Alves left Mascot Airport, Sydney, on Friday night 24 February for Nandi, Honolulu, San Francisco and New York. They then flew from Idlewild  to Montego Bay (apart from Marshall who flew direct to Trinidad).  Gomez arrived at Piarco Airport on 3 March after four days in Jamaica.

Time away from West Indies

  154 days 

 (14 October to 28 February)

Finances

Profit  was £140 000.

Published accounts of the tour

"Cricket's Brightest Summer"  L D ‘Strebor’ Roberts  [Jamaica, United Printers, 1961]

"With the West Indians in Australia"  AG 'Johnny' Moyes [Heinemann, 1961]

"Calypso Summer"   Mike Coward  (ABC Books, 2000) and DVD of same name (Fish Marketing, 2008)

"An Unforgettable Summer  - A 40th Anniversary Tribute"   Alf Batchelder, Ray Webster, Ken Williams

3-disc DVD set (Melbourne Cricket Club Library, 2000)

"The Greatest Test of All"  by Jack Fingleton  [Collins, 1961]

"Tale of Two Tests"  Richie Benaud (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1962) is not a full tour book, concentrating on the Brisbane Test match and Australia beating England at Old Trafford in 1961.

"The Fight for The Ashes"  by Ron Roberts also contains a section on the 1960-61 tour.

"The Tied Test"  (VHS video:  Australian Broadcasting Commission)

Postscript

The players were devoted to Worrell and would never let him down.