His career coincided with Garry Sobers, Rohan Kanhai and Conrad Hunte, to name a few, and intersected with several other greats of West Indian batting. Yet, Basil Butcher did manage to carve his own niche, writes Kalyanbrata Bhattacharyya
It is often said that perhaps, the most propitious event in one’s life is the time he or she was born. Basil Butcher is certainly one who shall attest this proposition.
Butcher’s career coincided with those of Sir Garfield Sobers, Rohan Kanhai and Conrad Hunte in the West Indies team and thus to find a place there, studded with supreme talents, was by itself, a tall order. Sir Frank Worrell was still at his peak and Clyde Walcott retired one year after Butcher made his debut in test cricket. To compound matters, he also had to vie with Joe Solomon, Seymour Nurse, and the upcoming David Holford and Clive Lloyd in order to cement his place in the test side during his stint of eleven year long career. Peter Lashley, Easton McMorris, Cammie Smith, Joe Carew, Robin Bynoe, Charlie Davis, and a few others had been lurking around as well, while internecine feuds between the different islands had been at their peak and therefore, merit and class were not always at a premium for selection.
Early days
Butcher was born in a sugar estate in Berbice, British Guyana, the only English-speaking and cricket playing country in the northern part of the continent of South America where cricket was followed passionately and as a matter of fact, West Indian cricket took its first step there only.
He was the first aboriginal, one of Amerindian descent to don the white flannels for the West Indies, since his grandmother was a native of America. He dabbled in various jobs like, teaching in a school, a clerk in public works department, insurance salesman, and welfare officer.
However, he also joined the Port Mourant Sports Club which had among others, Rohan Kanhai and Joe Solomon as the frontline players, and Robert Christiani, one of the only three cricketers to be dismissed at ninety nine in test match debut had been leading the club team. Butcher made his debut for his British Guyana in 1955 against Barbados, scored 64 and 32 runs and caught the eye of the connoisseurs immediately.
In his next outing against Jamaica at Bourda he scored 154 not out and during the Pakistan tour to West Indies in 1957-58, remembered for two triple centuries by Garfield Sobers and Hanif Mohammad, his score of 122 for British Guyana was portent of things to come and the selectors felt that he was a potential candidate for the tour to India and Pakistan the same winter under the leadership of Gerry Alexander.
At the top level
His scores of 95 not out against Services and 76 against Maharashtra within a couple of days earned him a place in the first Test Match at Brabourne Stadium at Bombay along with Wesley Hall, another giant in the making. His scores of 28 and 64 not out placed him in reckoning as a future prospect in the strong batting line-up. He scored 103 at the Eden Gardens, Calcutta, in the third Test Match, which West Indies won by an innings and 336 runs, a record till date. He followed it up with 142 at Madras in the next Test and ended the with 71 at Delhi.
Surely, this was not an indifferent entry into the harsh world of Test cricket. In a curious way, Butcher was involved in one of the rare incidents in Test cricket in this series. On his debut at Bombay, Garfield Sobers and Basil Butcher, the two batsmen at the crease, sought the help of two runners, Rohan Kanhai for the former and Conrad Hunte for the latter, at the two ends. This has been repeated only twice later.
Subsequently, Butcher’s performance in Pakistan lacked in glittering distinctions. He continued his indifferent form against the touring England side to West Indies in the high scoring 1959-60 series, led by Peter May. He was not considered for the tour to Australia in the famous 1960-61 series and was also dropped against a feeble Indian side in 1962.
Greatest innings
It was in 1963 during the tour to England that Butcher came to terms with himself and played his most luminous Test innings, as attested by his own admission, at Lord’s. By every analysis this match will stand out as one of the greatest matches ever played and there were innumerable twists and turns of fortune to have made the match so memorable. Butcher’s finest hour came on the third morning of this roller-coaster match which turned Conrad Hunte, Ted Dexter, Brian Close, Colin Cowdrey, Freddie Trueman, Derek Shackleton, David Allen, Frank Worrell, and Butcher himself into unforgettable characters for their outstanding performances or curious quirk of destiny.
He was handed over a letter written by his wife in the hotel, minutes before going to the ground. This was the first letter he received ever since he left his wife at home who was expecting their first child and his country was under the threat of civil war. He preferred not to read it and opened it at the time of the lunch interval which read that his wife had had a miscarriage. The opening pair, Conrad Hunte and Easton McMorris were by then back in the pavilion, the scorecard reading a dismal 15 for 2 in the second innings and Butcher, in a distressed frame of mind, and yet like an inspired individual put on the pads and batted in the company of Rohan Kanhai.
Kanhai and subsequently, Sobers and Solomon were out cheaply when he was joined by his captain, Frank Worrell and the team total read 104 for 5. Butcher unleashed quite a few magnificent and wristy strokes, mostly on the leg side, matching ball by ball, the lazy and languid elegance of his skipper. He reached his hundred when the team total stood at 154 and Worrell came down the wicket to congratulate him on his momentous performance and said, ‘You have just finished batting for Butcher. Look at the score. Now you have to bat for West Indies’
At the end of the day he remained not out at 129 and one photograph depicts him rushing towards the pavilion exhausted with his bat held high and being mobbed by the jubilant West Indian supporters. His partnership with Worrell yielded 110 runs where the latter’s contribution was only 33. Finally, he was out for 133 the next morning and the West Indies were all out for 229, which meant that Butcher had contributed 58.1 per cent of the runs of his team and it remained a record for West Indian cricket at that time.
Later career
Back home, West Indies played against Australia in 1965-66 in the series often dubbed as the war of the bouncers series. Butcher scored 117 at Port of Spain in the second Test.
It seems that he always reserved his best against England in England and in the tour in 1966, he scored an invaluable 209 not out at Trent Bridge in the fourth Test. England was ahead of West Indies by 90 runs in the first innings and West Indies in the second innings, though 65 for 2 at one stage, amassed 482 for 5, thanks largely to Butcher who entered into three important partnerships with Kanhai, Nurse and Sobers and the match was eventually drawn.
In his subsequent visit to India only six months later, or playing against England in West Indies in 1967-68, his batting lacked in luster and elegance. He participated in the twin tour to Australia and New Zealand in 1969-70 and scored two centuries at Sydney and Adelaide. He was controversially dismissed for 91 in his last Test innings at Leeds during their tour to England in the same year, proving once again that he enjoyed batting in the English soil most. The surviving videoclip of the match shows quite incontrovertibly that the ball from Derek Underwood missed the outside edge of his bat as he plunged forward, while Alan Knott appealed loudly for caught behind. When asked about the decision, the gentle and disconsolate Butcher merely replied, ‘I was out. The umpire said so.’
It is equally interesting to note that once in the fourth Test match at Port of Spain against England in 1967-68, famed for the magnanimous declaration by Garfield Sobers and the subsequent defeat, he bamboozled the English batting line-up earlier in the first innings with his rather innocuous leg-breaks and googlies. In 13.4 overs hetook 5 wickets for 34 runs. He never captured any more wickets in test cricket!
By that time, chinks were beginning to appear in the West Indian invincibility. Hunte retired, Hall and Griffith had been losing their edge in the pace department, they had no settled opening pair in batting, and Kanhai and Sobers, their premier architects for the last ten years, were surely past their prime. A new West Indian team evolved a few years later under the able leadership of Clive Lloyd.
Butcher had the mortification of once leading the West Indian team against an Irish cricket team at Belfast in 1969, which in all likelihood, he will like to forget. Martin Williamson, the executive editor of Cricinfo, narrated the story in great detail. Soon after the drawn second Test at Lord’s, the West Indies team flew to Belfast, Ireland, while Sobers had been nursing an injury in London and Butcher was in the helm of affairs. Incidentally, Clyde Walcott, the legendary cricketer of the late 1940s and 1950 and the manager during this tour was happy to turn out for the side in this match.
It rained heavily the previous night and when Butcher on winning the toss, wanted to bat first, he was persuaded by Steve Camacho and Joe Carew, the opening batsmen, to revise his decision. The wicket was so soggy that the finger was going deep inside the turf by an inch or so and when Butcher opted to bat first on winning the toss, they thought it to be an inexplicable decision.
Camacho said later, ‘Butcher hadn’t even inspected the wicket’. Carew told the stand-in captain, ‘You better get out of that suit quick and get your pads on because you are going out to be there in a minute.’ The West Indies were bundled out for a mere 25 runs in 90 minutes in the first day of the match, the fast bowler, Grayson Shillingford, top scoring with 9. Doug O’Riordan captured 4 wickets for 18 and Alec Goodwin, the captain, chipped in with a stunning 5 for 6 runs.
Reflections
Frank Birbalsingh interviewed Butcher in 2002 and some interesting facts were revealed. He was highly appreciative of Sir Frank Worrell as captain and alluded to his earnestness to bind the different islands in the West Indies into one entity. Worrell cared for the players but kept the interest of the team above everything. He even devised a system that no two cricketers from the same island should share the same room in the hotel, so that they could interact and learn more about each other’s ethos and culture. Worrell was one man who never discussed the problems of a team-mate in public; rather, he took him aside and converse privately. He was full of praise for his avuncular approach to one and all and once he said that Worrell did not mind the players drinking as much as they wanted but he warned, ‘... wanted six hours from them the next day, not five and three quarters!’ and in case anybody had indulged in excesses and was found wanting the next day, he had no heart for excuses and his words were, ‘You had to know your limits!’
However, Butcher was not so effusive about Sobers for his leadership qualities and felt that he lacked Worrell’s grasp of human psychology, though as a cricketer he was a cut above the rest.
Though it is well known that Roy Gilchrist of Jamaica was sent back home from India in their tour in 1958-59 for bowling a couple of beamers to Swaranjit Singh, a dear friend of Gerry Alexander, the West Indian captain, since their days together at the Cambridge University, Butcher revealed a few unknown stories about his deportation. He says that he twisted his knee in the first test match at Bombay and during a practice session at Kanpur before the next test match, Alexander hit one ball which narrowly missed Butcher’s injured knee. At this, Gilchrist jokingly said, ‘Butch, if that f- ball had hit your leg we would have had a good laugh’. Alexander, a product of the culture and values of Cambridge University and averse to profanities, was not particularly amused and asked him to apologize. Gilchrist did not wilt and the captain ordered to send him back to Jamaica. Berkeley Gaskin, the manager, intervened and spoke to the young cricketers. A team of delegation, led by Conrad Hunte approached Alexander, who, albeit reluctantly, changed his mind with the condition that in case Gilchrist violated the limits of decency or involved in any further unsavoury incidents, he would be summarily sent home. Gilchrist had to face the music when he bowled two consecutive beamers to Swaranjit Singh, and that too, against the order of the captain. Butcher attributed the harsh decision to the prevalent custom of class and racial difference in Jamaica at that time and lamented that it was a cruel end to a promising career. He felt that Gilchrist was shaping into a great fast bowler and his career was thus tragically cut short.
Lending his name
The Berbice Cricket Board and Georgetown Cricket Association decided to stage two 50 over goodwill cricket matches between two under-22 teams in order to promote the development of young talents. The name, Basil Butcher Trophy, has been assigned to it in 2012. Cricket gears and personal development items, worth $200, were allocated when the Rose Hall Town Youth & Sports Club hosted the 5th Annual Basil Butcher Cricket Development Trust Fund presentation.
Butcher, in his address, said that he was delighted to assist young players who he wants to see fulfill their dreams just like he did. Playing for the West Indies he said, was his greatest achievement and to share the dressing room with legends like Frank Worrell, Everton Weeks, Garfield Sobers, Rohan Kanhai, Conrad Hunte, Wes Hall and Lance Gibbs are memories that he would cherish all his life.
Along with John Trim, Rohan Kanhai, Joe Solomon, Roy Fredericks and Alvin Kallicharan, Butcher was inducted into the Berbice Hall of Fame in 2008.
Richie Benaud once said that Basil Butcher was the most difficult West Indian batsman to dislodge. Christopher Martin-Jenkins, the peerless British cricket journalist and the President of MCC in 2010, described him as a supple, wristy and resolute batsman.
One feature in his dismissals was that he was out leg before wicket so often and quite mockingly he attributed it to his rather unconventional way of bringing the bat down somewhere from about mid-off. With a wry smile he said’so probably I am playing across a lot of the time. Maybe if I'd had a coach I'd only have been clean bowled.’
In contrast to most of the West Indian batsmen, his batting was based on nimble footwork, laced with deft touches and effortless timing which made his batting look pristine and had an aesthetically pleasing quality which charmed the spectators.
A man endowed with a sense of humour, he once remarked laughingly ‘Worrell and Weekes were the heaviest drinkers I ever knew, and Garry was a very close third !’ He came down heavily upon the current selectors on their practice of placing education qualifications as the prime requisite for captaincy and lamented that Shivnaraine Chanderpaul was ignored for the premier position, in spite of having all the ingredients to lead the West Indies team, albeit not being virtually able to read or write.
He felt that it is not money but indifferent attitude that plagues the present West Indian cricket team in recent times and is responsible for the unspeakable decline in the quality of their cricket. He regretted that players like Courtney Walsh and Curtly Ambrose rarely ever visit the dressing rooms, and in the process, a lot of cricketing resource is wasted, since those who never played the game, call the shots now a days. Once he lamented ‘Cricket means so much to us and we do so little to prevent its destruction.’
During one of the recent trips to West Indies by India one Indian cricket correspondent asked him which Indian bowler troubled him most. Butcher’s unhesitating answer was Guptee!, though he faced Vinoo Mankad, Ghulam Ahmed, Bishen Singh Bedi, Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, and Srinivas Venkataraghavan in his two encounters in 1958-59, and 1966-67. As a matter of fact, when he went out to bat in his first test match at Bombay, he was all at sea against Subhash Gupte and reportedly he told the manager, Berkley Gaskin, ‘Mr Manager, I don’t know what that man is doing. I play to four balls and I miss all four.’
He fastened the uppermost buckles of his pads loosely, presumably because it allowed him to bend his knees easily and execute his array of wristy strokes, and thus the flapping top part of the pads often gave the impression that his pair of pads were larger than would fit him.
Abhishek Mukherjee has pointed out that Butcher has the rare distinction of scoring at least fifty runs in each of his first six test matches, others being Bert Sutcliffe of New Zealand, Saeed Ahmed of Pakistan and Sunil Gavaskar of India.
Indeed, Butcher was a victim of his own time. It is always a testing proposition to bat in the august company of Frank Worrell, Rohan Kanhai, Conrad Hunte and over and above, the genius of Garfield Sobers, and yet, achieve permanence and eminence. Nonetheless, Butcher played with a certain panache, fortitude and dignity that has made him a distinctive character in the immeasurable and glittering treasure of West Indian cricket.
Butcher played in 78 innings in 44 Test Matches and scored 3,104 runs at an average of 43.11, including seven centuries and sixteen 50s. In first class cricket his tally stands at 11,628 in 169 matches at an average of 49.90 and contains 31 centuries, the highest being 209 not out against England at Leeds, Headingley in 1966. Currently he runs his own bauxite company and spends his leisure time in forlornly watching the West Indians play the game, losing now their customary charm and élan, he loved so much.