Cricket has produced hundreds of individual heroes, memorable pairs by the score, and several permutations of West Indian pace-bowling quartets in the 1970s and 80s, but only one genuine trio: the Three Ws – Frank Worrell, Everton Weekes and Clyde Walcott – who graced the game from the late 1940s to the late 50s. Across that decade the dismissal of a West Indies opener did not make things easier on opposing bowlers, but considerably harder, with Worrell going in at No 3 and Weekes and Walcott still to come at four and five.
With 4,455 Test runs and 15 Test centuries, Weekes, who has died aged 95, was the most prolific scorer of the three, although some held that Worrell made a greater overall contribution through also being captain, and Walcott through also being wicketkeeper. At the crease, though, few could deny Weekes’s striking likeness to Donald Bradman: he attacked the bowling in the same way as Bradman, and with similar results, if with a slightly less spectacular (though still highly impressive) average of 58.61.
He cut, hooked and drove powerfully off either foot the fastest bowlers of his time. His rare defensive stroke was invariably played late, as though he mentally ran through every possible aggressive shot, looking until the last moment for a way of attacking the bowling before reluctantly conceding that the particular ball could only be played defensively; which defensive stroke he then employed as gracefully as he did grudgingly.
Playing for West Indies against Hampshire in 1950, Weekes hit 246 not out in 242 minutes, with his first century coming in 95 minutes. Eleven days later, against Leicestershire, he made 200 not out, his first hundred coming in only 65 minutes, a performance that prompted Worrell, his partner at the wicket, to advise him not to hit the ball so hard. “You give the fielders no chance, so they don’t chase the ball,” said Worrell. “Hit a little less hard and they will have to run after it. Watch how quickly they tire.”
Weekes is said to have appreciated the joke, but evidently did not heed the advice: he continued hitting every ball as hard as he could. Belligerence did not overwhelm meticulous judgment, though: like Bradman, Weekes deliberately avoided hitting sixes, deeming them an unjustifiable risk; in his Test career he struck the ball clean over the boundary just once.
In his debut Test against England at home in Barbados in 1948, he scored 35 and 25. After scores of 36, 20 and 36 in his next two Tests, only his 141 in his single innings of the last Test in Jamaica kept him in the team for his first overseas tour against India the next year, where he came into his own, hitting four consecutive Test centuries to create a record of five consecutive Test centuries that still stands today.
In New Zealand in 1955-56, Weekes hit three centuries in the first three Tests (in all of which the West Indies needed to bat only once), five centuries in his first five first-class innings and six centuries out of a total of 10 first-class innings. He was also a brilliantly versatile fielder, taking 49 catches in his 48 Tests, and was a 1951 Wisden Cricketer of the Year.
It is no surprise that the Three Ws were part of the team that for the first time defeated England at Lord’s (Weekes scoring 63 twice) and won the Test series in 1950. They were a big draw at the gates, between them making 1,106 runs, nearly half the West Indies total of 2,313. Weekes contributed 338 runs from six innings, including 129 at Trent Bridge, part of a 283-run partnership with Worrell. Weekes’s highest first-class score of 304 not out came against Cambridge University that summer, one of five scores of 200 or more that he posted during the tour.
What is staggering is that three batsmen so great should have lived at the same time, played for the same team and be born in the same, tiny place: the island of Barbados. More than anyone before or after them, other than Sir Garfield Sobers, also from Barbados, and George Headley (who, though he played for Jamaica, had a Barbadian father), the Three Ws defined West Indies cricket. Devastating as their impact on the West Indian batting order was, it was faint compared with their impact on the West Indian social order. They wreaked greater havoc on staid, white-dominated Barbadian and Caribbean society than on any bowling attack they faced.
The Three Ws, who were all eventually knighted (Weekes in 1995), made a statement of racial equality as powerful as it was simple: if you would keep us down, you must first knock over our stumps. Like Headley before them, their ability forced the ruling classes of their time to deal with them as equals. Nevertheless, Worrell was not named the first black captain of the West Indies unequivocally until 1961; without Headley’s example, and without Weekes and Walcott following him in the batting order, the triumph of the human spirit might have been even longer delayed.
Born in the New Orleans slum abutting the Kensington Oval, Barbados’s Test venue in the capital, Bridgetown, Weekes was an inner-city child. Educated at St Leonard’s school, Bridgetown, like other poor boys he was allowed net practice at Kensington, where ability and a nominal groundsman’s job could bring them places on a team representing a club they could not join. Weekes played in the Barbados Cricket League from the age of 12 and was both good and strong-willed enough to make his debut for Barbados in 1944: he was named captain in 1958, the year of his last appearance for the West Indies, in the fifth Test against Pakistan in Trinidad. His relentless, forceful batting style took its toll on his body, and he retired from Test cricket aged only 32, though he continued playing first-class cricket until 1964. As only the second black captain of Barbados, he was outstanding, leading strong Barbadian teams that believed in him implicitly.
After cricket he found employment and respect as a cricket coach and commentator in Barbados, and as an international match referee, but not a great deal of money. An excellent bridge player, he represented Barbados for many years. But it is indubitably for his batting that he will be remembered.
He is survived by three sons and a daughter. His son Andy Weekes, from his marriage to Joan, which ended in divorce, played youth cricket for Barbados; David Murray, a son from another relationship, was also a West Indies cricketer; and a grandson, Ricky Hoyte, also played cricket for Barbados.
• Everton DeCourcy Weekes, cricketer, born 26 February 1925; died 1 July 2020