“Worrell never made a crude or an ungrammatical stroke… Worrell was poetry.”
-Sir Neville Cardus, the doyen of cricket writers
“So when half a million Australians lined the streets of Melbourne in their ticker tape farewell to Worrell and his men, they were not only paying a final tribute to the team's great achievements, they were recognizing the capacity and potential of equals both on and off the turf…He saw the many diverse elements of the West Indies as a whole, a common culture and outlook separated only by the Caribbean Sea.”
-Sir Learie Constantine
“I have seen grown men break down and cry because they felt they had let him (Sir Frank Worrell), down…”
-Roy Gilchrist, formerly West Indies controversial fast bowler, and the most feared in his time
After I graduated from Queens College and Bishops High School (after it became co-ed, of course), I proceeded to Cave Hill, Barbados to pursue my legal education, competing with some of the finest scholars. One of the first places I visited was Sir Frank Worrell’s gravesite. I wanted to pay tribute to one of the Commonwealth’s foremost heroes. I had read so much about this man. He was bigger than life, and was regarded as the most powerful unifying force in the West Indies and one of the most influential and greatest West Indians of all time, a quintessential Caribbean man.
You could feel his presence, even after his death. The fact that he died so young, (42 years), adds to his mystique. Later, the addition of the monuments of Sir Clyde Walcott and Sir Everton Weekes, who collectively formed the unique trinity called “the 3Ws,” all of whom were knighted for their services to cricket, completed the legend of these three great West Indies cricketers, who were born within a mile and eighteen months of each other in Barbados, delivered by the same midwife, and whose busts now stand beside each other.
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