Yet Another Windies Great Honoured

Fri, Jan 4, '02

 

Even after a decade and a half following his retirement from competitive cricket former West Indies captain Clive Lloyd is still being recognised for his success on the field of play.

The Guyana-born Lloyd is to be bestowed soon with his second honorary academic honour in July as he has been invited to accept the Degree of Doctor of Letters Honoris Causet from the Universities of Greater Manchester in England in July.

When he accepts. Lloyd will add the second such honour to his list after receiving a honorary doctorate from the University of Hull in England in 1984.

This is the first time that the four Universities of Manchester have jointly conferred an honorary degree on an individual who has distinguished himself 'through achievement in sport and/or by furthering the aims and objectives of the Commonwealth more generally'.

The conferring of the degree will coincide with the holding of the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester.

Clive Lloyd is a giant in West Indies cricket in physical terms, as well as in terms of his achievements. The 6'5" who started his test career against India in December 1966, went on to become the most successful West Indian captain.

Having shrewdly analysed what was required to make West Indies the top team in Test cricket, he put his plan into action. The results were stunning. The West Indies team under Clive Lloyd won 34 test matches out of the 74.

He will always be remembered for having transformed West Indies cricket in the late '70s and early '80s into one of the most formidable test playing units.

So good was Lloyd's team that he and his team had an unprecedented sequence of 11 successive victories and 27 successive tests without a defeat. This record was only recently surpassed by the current Australian test team.

At the end of his career, he had racked up 19 centuries, having scored most of them as captain, and he ended with an impressive average of 46.67.

Lloyd has long called for a Cricket Academy and in his outstanding manager's report on the West Indies disastrous tour to South Africa in 1998, he gave as good an account of what transpired and offered a solution to the malaise afflicting West Indies cricket.

Those who know Clive Lloyd well, recognise his intellectual qualities. In his biography of Desmond Haynes, the British writer Rob Stein gives a tantalizing glimpse.

"Crouched over a coffee table in his bedroom at the Embassy Hotel in Bayswater, Clive Lloyd proferred the balanced overview one might expect of one of Lancashire's finest, and best loved, adopted sons. The book lying on the dressing table certainly gave an insight into man and muse Inward Hunger. The Education of a Prime Minister by Eric Williams."

SOURCE: Stabroek News.