Joe Solomon and the Spirit of Port Mourant: The Making of the Guyana and West Indies Cricketer and its Context Thirties-Sixties, by Clem Seecharan, with Ian McDonald, was printed by Hansib this month (November 2022). This ebook examines the non-public and wider social forces that made the oldest West Indies Check cricketer distinctive. Hosted by John Mair, the ebook was launched on the Guyana Excessive Fee in London on October 27, 2022, that includes Clem Seecharan and Ian McDonald, famend cricket commentator Joseph ‘Reds’ Perreira, and West Indies cricket legend Sir Clive Lloyd.
Description: This tribute to Joe Solomon (1930-), now the oldest West Indies Check cricketer, celebrates the profession ‘and its context’ of this dependable decrease center order batsman on his 92nd birthday. Solomon is from Port Mourant, an distinctive sugar plantation on the Corentyne Coast in Guyana (previously British Guiana), birthplace of the Guyanese chief Cheddi Jagan (1918-97), in addition to a number of different Check cricketers: John Trim, Rohan Kanhai, Basil Butcher, Ivan Madray and Alvin Kallicharran. Solomon performed in 14 of the 15 Checks led by the primary black captain of the West Indies, Sir Frank Worrell (1924-67), between 1960 and 1963. Worrell’s groups rekindled ardour broadly for a recreation that had turn into stodgy within the late Fifties. Although much less flamboyant, Joe was the even-tempered stabiliser in a staff of gifted, if mercurial, stroke-makers.
In December 1960, Solomon executed two run outs, direct hits when Australia was on the verge of victory, that had been instrumental in effecting the primary Tied Check within the historical past of cricket. The model and sportsmanship of Worrell’s staff, in 1960-1, so captivated the Australian creativeness that over 300,000 poured into the streets of Melbourne, on 17 February 1961, to say farewell to the West Indians. Joe Solomon can be remembered eternally for that Tied Check in Brisbane in December 1960; however, as Ian McDonald reminds us, ‘time and again, Joe walked to the wicket with everybody within the nation relying on him to save lots of the day’. This ebook examines the non-public and wider social forces that made Joe the epitome of the qualities Worrell inculcated in his gamers: software, management of the feelings, constancy to the traditions of the noble recreation, staff spirit and an appreciation that West Indians anticipated their cricketers to be exemplary ambassadors, inside and past the boundary.
CLEM SEECHARAN is Emeritus Professor of Historical past at London Metropolitan College. His books embody Muscular Studying: Cricket and Schooling within the Making of the British West Indies; From Ranji to Rohan: Cricket and Indian Id in Colonial Guyana, Eighteen Nineties-Sixties (Hansib); Hand-in-Hand Historical past of Cricket in Guyana (Hansib), two volumes of which have been printed. He’s engaged on Quantity 3. He obtained the Physician of Letters from the College of the West Indies (Trinidad) in 2017.
For extra data, see https://www.hansibpublications.com/Joe-Solomon-and-the-Spirit-of-Port-Mourant
Watch launch reside right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HcypvK1jIU