Dead Eye Joe bids goodbye

WI’s Solomon, who passed away last week, played an important part in history when his throw, after sighting only one stump, ran out Australia’s Ian Meckiff to cause cricket’s first-ever Tied Test

Limited overs cricket has helped in creating more athletic cricketers. The word “more” must be stressed, because it’s not that there weren’t ultra lively and splendid catchers in fielding sides.  You could say they were few and far between.

One of the finest among them—West Indies’s Joe Solomon—passed away in New York last week at the age of 93.

Solomon went down in history as the man whose direct hit brought about Test cricket’s first of two Tied Tests at the Gabba in Brisbane during the Australian summer of 1960-61.

Solomon played 27 Tests for the West Indies, mainly as a lower-order batsman from 1958-59 to 1964-65.

International cricket started for the Guyanese on the 1958-59 tour of India. At Green Park, Kanpur, he played his role in the Gerry Alexander-led West Indies’s 203-run win with Test debut scores of 45 and 86 on a jute matting pitch.

The debutant’s second innings knock earned rich praise from reputed cricket correspondent Dicky Rutnagur in the Indian Cricket Field Annual. “If the quality of his [Solomon] innings went partially unnoticed, it was because he was eclipsed by the unadulterated brilliance of his left-handed partner [Garfield Sobers, who scored 198], whom he assisted in a stand of 163, the highest ever for the sixth-wicket by West Indies against India,” wrote Rutnagur.

Ironically, a run out (the mode of dismissal he became most famous for two Decembers later, prevented Solomon from scoring a hundred on debut. He fell short by 14 as the visitors then declared to give India 444 to chase.

In the next Test at Kolkata, he helped himself to an unbeaten 69 in West Indies’s 614-5 declared to which India responded by getting bowled out for 124 and 154.

After 43 and 8 not out in Chennai, Solomon got his maiden Test hundred in the final encounter of the series in Delhi. Again, West Indies batted only once, to score 644-8 declared, a closure delayed to enable Solomon to get his ton he, in Rutnagur’s words, “so richly deserved for his consistent batting throughout the series.” Helped by Chandu Borde’s 96 and Hemu Adhikari’s 40, India drew the game for the series to end 3-0 in West Indies’s favour. This was the series in which India had four different captains (Polly Umrigar, Ghulam Ahmed, Vinoo Mankad and Adhikari). Talking of captains, Solomon pleased his skipper (Alexander) no end, averaging 117.00 and also earned the respect and confidence of the next captain, Frank Worrell.

Worrell along with his Australian counterpart Richie Benaud conspired to revitalise Test cricket through the 1960-61 series Down Under. They started things brilliantly with attractive cricket which led to the opening Test at Brisbane ending in a tie.

Solomon played an important part in that landmark moment in cricket by hitting the stumps with a direct hit as Lindsay Kline turned one towards square leg, took off for the winning run only to see his partner Ian Meckiff run out through Solomon’s brilliance.

Journalist Mike Coward, who interviewed Solomon for an ABC documentary on the Tied Test, told me from Sydney on Wednesday that the ex-batsman was a fine man and his recollections of the game were splendid. “The ball was coming to me. I know it’s the last run for them to win. I collected it with both hands. I threw at the wicket and it went straight to the stumps,” Solomon recalled in the documentary.

The amazing part was that, from his position, Solomon could see only one stump and he hit it. Although this piece of brilliance lodged itself firmly in memory banks, it was not the first time he did it in that Test. Alan Davidson, who was putting on a significant partnership with his skipper Richie Benaud, suffered the same fate as Meckiff earlier in the session. It was a match-turning dismissal because the West Indians, except for skipper Worrell, believed that the two established all-rounders would guide the Australians home. Solomon felt he was lucky to get Davidson run out with that strike. That said, he was known to train hard for direct hits at practice. His childhood played a role as well. “As boys from the country, we would pitch marbles and try to steal mangoes by hitting them down. We had a good aim,” he told Coward.

Sobers, who was Solomon’s third and last Test captain, wrote in his instructional book, Cricket Advance: “After that (Brisbane Test), of course, he simply had to be known as Dead Eye Joe.”

Amidst admiration and kudos for his fielding, there was leg-pulling. Sobers revealed to readers what Australian all-rounder Ken ‘Slasher’ Mackay told Solomon during the Brisbane Test celebrations: “Why don’t they give you a turn at the bowling crease more often? After all, you are the best chucker of the lot.”

Solomon was a quiet West Indian. He went about his post-playing career without being in the public glare. And I don’t remember reading an interview pertaining to his career when he came to India as manager of Alvin Kallicharran’s 1978-79 West Indies team. Commentator Reds Perreira indicated to me earlier this week that Solomon may have played a good hand in that second-string West Indies team keeping India’s victory count to just one in the six-Test series.

Solomon was reserved, but Reds said he could engage you in a cricket-related conversation.

There’s a good chance Solomon is up there discussing his direct throw with six of his teammates and eight members of the Australian playing XI that figured in the Tied Test even as the survivors remember him down here.

mid-day’s group sports editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stance.
He tweets @ClaytonMurzello. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper

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