Carl Hooper -- Hundredth Test

When the West Indies take the field on October 9 at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, Carl Llewellyn Hooper will be playing his hundredth Test. Nearly 15 years ago, he made his Test debut at the same venue on December 11, 1987.

Then, the West Indies line-up included such luminaries as skipper Viv Richards, openers Gordon Greenidge & Desmond Haynes, wicket-keeper Jeff Dujon, middle-order batsmen Ritchie Richardson and Gus Logie, pacers Courtney Walsh, Patrick Patterson and Winston Davis and off-spinner Clyde Butts. The Indian bowlers that Hooper faced in his debut included none other Kapil Dev and Chetan Sharma while the batting line-up included Dilip Vengsarkar, Mohinder Amarnath, Mohammad Azharuddin and Ravi Shastri. In the next Test, Hooper made an even unbeaten 100 at the age of 21 years and 11 days thus becoming the youngest West Indian since George Headley (20 years 226 days) to score a maiden Test hundred.

Long before Hooper made his Test debut, in his teens he was a cricket prodigy of almost unparalleled ability. In the mind of an old friend of mine who used to play at school with Hooper, he is a genius par excellence. Hooper has been dominating the regional youth scene as it had never been dominated before and is unlikely ever to be dominated again. Guyana took a teenaged Hooper out of the Young West Indies side that were playing England in 1985 and played him in the regional Shell Shield. He heralded his arrival with a century in his first innings against Barbados at Kensington, then he toured Zimbabwe with the West Indies 'B' team and it was not long after that he was elevated to Test cricket. When he scored his maiden century, West Indies seem to have found a natural successor to Headley, three W?s, Sobers, Kanhai, Lloyd and Richards.

Then his career entered a bewildering, mystifying, and sometimes downright disappointing phase. Cricket connoisseurs were treated to a roller-coaster ride. Hooper is an enigma who has left many of his die-hard fans with heart in their collective mouths whenever he played a false stroke after sublimely straight driving a four in the previous ball. Many times Hooper would be so well set as he gloriously strokes the ball all around the ground, only to give his wicket away needlessly.

Hooper has played some crucial innings in his career, most notably his 134 (out of team total of 294) in the third Test in Pakistan at Lahore, December 1990, against the likes of Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis breathing fire and brimstone, Imran Khan and Abdul Qadir, and in February 1998 against England in West Indies at Port-of-Spain, his unbeaten 94 in the fourth innings when WI was chasing a target of 282 on one of the most unpredictable pitch in the Caribbean and WI entered fifth day precariously positioned at 185-5. These innings only served to show the contradictory nature of Hooper's cricket.

While the West Indian players of yesteryear -- from the great George Headley through three W's, Garry Sobers, Rohan Kanhai, Clive Lloyd to Vivian Richards -- used the cricket as a vehicle for anti-colonial struggles, the expression of Caribbean identity and self-determination, Hooper, along with Lara, represent the generation of cricketers who developed their own identity of self-representation and they reflect the prevailing paradigm in the Caribbean.

Cricket in the Caribbean over the past three decades has gone through transformation in response to the shift from 'nationalistic expressionism' to 'globalisation'. Thus there has been a dilution of the 'nationalistic expressionism' of West Indies cricket and concomitant diminishing of the psychological and emotional imperatives that once drove their predecessors to achieve near-immortality on the field of play. Some of the results of this paradigm shift include the fact that the West Indies professional cricketer placed more emphasis on earning a living by playing in English, Australian and South Africa domestic seasons in addition to the WI domestic seasons and tours and the failure of the West Indies cricket administrators in adapting to the new global environment with its new technologies, capitalism and revised geo-political landscapes.

Hooper has contributed immensely to the West Indian team as a slow bowler in the era when fast bowling ruled the roost for a long period of time. He is a peerless slip catcher with over 100 catches to his name. Hooper is unique among all cricketers with the record of over 5,000 runs, 100 wickets and 100 catches in both versions of game, Tests and ODIs.

In 1986, while playing for Werneth in the Central Lancashire League, Hooper overhauled Sir Frank Worrell's record league aggregate set in 1951, by scoring 1,715 runs. When Hooper was at the English County Kent, he scored more than 1,000 runs in five seasons, topping the average in 1991 season by scoring 1,501 at 93.81.

In March 2000, Hooper won the Victorian Cricket Association's Ryder medal for the best player of the season in Melbourne grade cricket, and it was not long after when he returned to the Caribbean for the Busta Cup series where he scored the then record breaking 954 runs at 95.40 with four centuries. In first class cricket, Hooper has 20,801 runs for an average of 47.16 with 60 centuries, 508 wickets at an average of 35.28 and 336 catches. He is the only 10th West Indian with over 20,000 runs in first class cricket and one of the few with over 50 first class 100s, joining such luminaries as Greenidge, Haynes, Richards, Lloyd, Sobers, Kanhai and Kallicharran.

I have often described Hooper's batting as akin to a Mozart's composition. When Hooper made his highest Test score of 233 against India at Georgetown in his native Guyana earlier this year, I was one of the several people who witness his amazing innings on a live webcast. He played many memorable shots, there were pulls shot in the vein of the Master Blaster, there were sublime straight drive that were reminiscent of Greenidge, there were late cuts that many old-timers swore were patented by the late Frank Worrell, and there were square drives that might have came out of Lawrence 'Yagga' Rowe?s manual.

Hooper's three centuries, 579 runs at an average of 82.71 against India in that series gave both his loyal fans and most stubborn detractors pure delight. I was ecstatic as were many others who witnessed Hooper's innings as it started tentatively while he gathered confidence and then dominated with strokes of brilliance as his full repertoire of genius blossomed.

West Indian Cricketers who played 100 Tests:
CA Walsh - 132
IVA Richards - 121
DL Haynes - 116
CH Lloyd - 110
CG Greenidge - 108
CL Hooper:
Born: 15 December 1966, Georgetown, Demerara, Guyana
Teams: Demerara, Guyana, Kent, West Indies
First Class Debut: 8th October 1983, Demerara v Berbice at Georgetown
Test Debut: 11th December 1987, India v West Indies at Mumbai
ODI Debut: 18th March 1987, West Indies v New Zealand at Dunedin
Batting Style: Right Hand Bat
Bowling Style: Right Arm Off-break

Hooper's Test Match Record:

Batting & Fielding
Mat-----Inns-----No-----Runs-----HS-----Ave-----100-----50-----Ct-----St
99------168------15-----5638-----233----36.84---13------27-----110----0

Bowling:
Ov--------M-----Runs-----Wks-----Ave-----BB-----5-----10-----S/Rt-----Econ/Rt
2239.1---519----5445-----110-----49.50---5-26---4-----0------122.1----2.43

Batting Performance by Opponents:
Opponents------Mat-----Inns-----No-----Runs-----HS-----Ave-----100-----50-----Ct
Australia------25------43-------1------1095-----102----26.07-----1------6-----38
England--------24------37-------5------1113-----127----34.78-----3------5-----24
India----------16------25-------2------1233-----233----53.61-----5------3-----13
New Zealand-----2-------3-------0--------39------17----13.00-----0------0------1
Pakistan-------14------27-------5-------998-----178*---45.36-----3------4-----14
South Africa---10------20-------1-------595------86----31.31-----0------5-----14
Sri Lanka-------6------11-------1-------377------81----37.70-----0------4------4
Zimbabwe--------2-------2-------0-------188-----149----94.00-----1------0------2
Overall--------99-----168------15------5638-----233----36.84----13-----27----110
As Captain-----19------32-------2------1485-----233----49.50-----4------9-----16

Records:
West Indies 10th Wicket Record:
Wkt-----Runs-----Batsmen------------------------------Match------------------Ground
10th----106------CL Hooper & CA Walsh-----------------1992-93 WI v Pak-------ARG

Ground Partnership Records:
Wkt-----Runs-----Batsmen------------------------------Match------------------Ground
5th-----293------CL Hooper and S Chanderpaul----------2001-02 WI v Ind-------Bourda
4th-----153------BC Lara and CL Hooper----------------2001-02 WI v SL--------Galle Int.
10th----106------CL Hooper & CA Walsh-----------------1992-93 WI v Pak-------ARG
4th------97------BC Lara and CL Hooper----------------1996-97 WI v SL--------Arnos Vale
5th------58------CL Hooper and RIC Holder-------------1996-97 WI v SL--------Arnos Vale
6th------34------CL Hooper and IR Bishop--------------1996-97 WI v SL--------Arnos Vale