Kalli Rates Among the Finest

Like most gifted people, Alvin Isaac Kallicharran exhibited early signs of unusual ability. As a young batsman, still in short pants, he captured the attention of a number of people knowledgeable in cricket by the precocity of his batting talent.

That precocity was soon in evidence when he captained the Guyana school boys team in 1966 at the age of 17 years. Two innings he played on this occasion stand out and were proof that he was destined to play at the highest level.

In Dominica, in the match against the Combined Islands, Kallicharran faced an aggressive Norbert Phillips who was on the rampage, having bowled out half of the Guyana team. He did so on a pitch that was poorly prepared and which required great skill for survival. Kallicharran demonstrated that he was equal to the occasion and scored 98 runs, an innings of the highest technical order for someone so young.

Later in that same series at Bourda, he scored another 98 against Trinidad and Tobago. What was remarkable in this innings was his ability to sweep Richard deSouza who was bowling offbreaks from the middle and leg stumps with such consistency that it had the older minds of the game nodding their heads in acknowledgement of his exceptional talent. Big things beckoned.

Kallicharran was invited by the Guyana selectors to play the trials for that year. And when Gary Sobers brought the Barbadian team to Guyana in 1966, having heard of Kallicharran, he invited him to practice with the Bajans. By 1967 Kallicharran was to become one of the youngest players to play for Guyana in the Shell Shield competition.

Kallicharran, who was born on 21 March 1949, made his debut for the West Indies against New Zealand in 1972 and was to display his exceptional all round batting ability when he scored a century at Bourda in front of his home crowd. The record shows that the last 41 runs of that century were made in just 60 minutes.

His class was confirmed when he scored another 100 in the second innings of the final match in Trinidad, making him in the process a certainty for the home series against Australia in 1973. Playing well in that series, Kallicharran made 53 and 91 on a treacherous pitch in Port-of-Spain, enabling the West Indies to win that game. Averaging 40 on the tour to England in the same year, he maintained his batting momentum in the return series in England stroking 158 in the first test in Port-of-Spain.

On tours to India and Pakistan in 1974 and 1975, Kallicharran scored two centuries and got into the 90s twice. In the meantime, World Cup cricket was born. And in the early round of this inaugural series in 1975, Kallicharran put Dennis Lillee to the sword. It was a batting display against Dennis Lillee that is still the talk of the cricket cognoscenti. Hitting Lillee for sixes and fours, he raced to 75 and won the game for the West Indies. In the furnace of West Indian defeat in Australia in 1976, he scored a century in the first innings, having suffered a broken nose.

Against India in the same year, he was second in the averages to Viv Richards. The two outstanding West Indian batsmen shared a double century third wicket stand in the opening test in Barbados. In Port-of-Spain, now his favourite hunting ground, Kallicharran scored 103.

Then injury struck. Not long after the 1976 series against India, Kallicharran was afflicted with fibrositis in his shoulder which was to hamper his play later in England. He grafted for 97 and added 303 in the third wicket in the first test at Trent Bridge but poor batting performances at Lords and Old Trafford, due to the aggravation of his injury which was evident, ruled him out of the rest of tour. Against the visiting Pakistanis he was below the very high standard he set for himself.

Then came the controversy. Kallicharran made headline news when it was reported that he had signed for the Packer World Series but he subsequently backed out of it.

Having extricated himself from this rather delicate situation, Kallicharran returned to lead the official West Indies team which had suffered grave depletion by the loss of such players as Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards to Kerry Packer. For the second half of the test series against Australia in 1978, Kallicharran captained the West Indies and won the fourth test at Port-of-Spain, as a result of his splendid batting and captaincy. He was the fourth Guyanese to captain the West Indies, following in the footsteps of Maurice Fernandes, Rohan Kanhai and Clive Lloyd.

With the return of the main West Indian players to the team, including Clive Lloyd, who was restored to the captaincy, Kallicharran seems to have entered a period of disappointment and indifferent batting. Apart from a century at Adelaide in the 1980 tour to Australia, Kallicharran struggled. He not only struggled there, but on subsequent tours to New Zealand, England and Pakistan.

Disenchantment must have set in along with concern for his own future and this might explain his remarkable decision to join the South African side, Transvaal, and thus earned the rather questionable distinction of being the first West Indian to play Currie Cup in South Africa, which was still at the time an international pariah for its apartheid policies.

Apparently unscathed by the controversy surrounding his decision to play in South Africa, Kallicharran became one of the most prolific scorers in First Class cricket in the 1980s. County cricket became the arena in which he dominated and in 1982 he scored 2,000 runs for Warwickshire, including three championships double hundreds and five single hundreds.

In his five first seven seasons with Warwickshire, Kallicharran passed 1,000 first class runs and has 52 championship centuries to his credit, including a record nine in 1984 and six double hundreds. However, injury again intervened, this time in the form of a recurring hand injury, which restricted his scoring. Midway through the 1990 season, Kallicharran announced his retirement. The curtain had come down on a glittering career.

Like his mentor, Rohan Kanhai, Alvin Kallicharran must rank as one of the finest and most complete batsmen that Guyana and the West Indies have produced. His hallmark was his capacity to play spin of the highest order. He was a touch player and derived his power from exceptional timing.

Alive Lloyd's assessment of Kallicharran's qualities as a batsman would be the best way to conclude this portrait: "He is one of the best players of spin bowling I have seen, and one only needs to glance at the scores at Queen's Park Oval ? a traditional spinner's paradise ? to be convinced of this. This is not to say that he was inadequate against pace, and, at his best, is the complete player.