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Hunte played to win

After the retirement of the great Frank Worrell in 1964, it was expected that the captaincy of the West Indian cricket team would go to senior opening batsman Conrad Hunte. The West Indies were to play Australia in a home series, which was billed as the Championship of the World, but the West Indian selectors surprisingly announced that Gary Sobers would lead the national team.

While visiting some friends in Miami, Florida, Hunte learnt that he was not named captain. He was upset with the injustice meted out to him and wanted to quit the game. But Hunte, who had joined the Moral Rearmament programme some years earlier, felt he could not take this decision unilaterally. So he asked God. The reply was short and simple: "Stay on and serve West Indies cricket as number two." Hunte accepted.

However, the Almighty did not drop the matter at that. He continued: "Apologise to Sobers for your bitterness against him because he got the captaincy."

'Oh, no, I won't,' Hunte replied. God did not argue. For six weeks, Hunte wrestled with the issue and finally concluded that however wrong the selectors' decision was, his anger and bitterness towards Sobers was unjustified. Thus, he decided to apologise.

The opportunity arose in March 1966, when the West Indies played a friendly game against the International Cavaliers at Kingston, Jamaica. At six o' clock in the evening, Hunte entered Sobers's hotel room. The captain was sleeping and Hunte woke him up.

"I wanted to say that I have taken your being made captain very hard, and that I have been bitter. I wanted to quit. I am sorry. I will stay on and serve you and the team if selected."

Sobers admitted that he never wanted the captaincy and these things did not matter to him. He expected everyone chosen for the national team to give his best. Hunte and Sobers talked for a long time, discussing the strategy to defeat the Australians.

Later, as the West Indies toured India under Sobers, the second Test match in Calcutta was interrupted by riots. Many of the West Indian players, fearing for their lives, were not keen to continue the match. But from his contacts in Calcutta, Hunte came to know that the interruption had been deliberately caused by a small group of people who were out to discredit the state government. The spectators did not have anything against the players, and were keen to have the match resumed.

But the final decision had to be taken by the captain, Sobers. While praying to God yet again, Hunte shockingly learnt that he was still holding a grudge against Sobers. Certain things had gone wrong with the team and Sobers had not taken any action. But Hunte learnt that he had erred in washing his hands off the matter, expecting Sobers to bear all the responsibility. The next morning, he met the captain and explained to him the causes behind the riots. Initially, Sobers was reluctant to play on. The Indian captain, the Nawab of Pataudi, also made a pitch for continuation, explaining that if the Test was cancelled, the small group which had caused the disruption would claim victory. Sobers was convinced. Play went on, and the West Indies won the Test by an innings.

A cricketer with a conscience! Yes, that was Conrad Hunte of Barbados and the West Indies, who died earlier this week at the age of 67. An outstanding opening batsmen, Hunte played in 44 Tests, scoring 3,245 runs, averaging a healthy 45.06. He hit eight centuries, with 260 against Pakistan in his debut series in 1957-58 as his highest.

Last October, Hunte was elected the president of the Barbados Cricket Association. He toured India twice, in 1958-59 and 1966-67.

Hunte always cherished that particular moment in the first Test against the Australians at Brisbane in 1960, which ended in a tie. In a match where fortunes swung wildly, Australia needed three runs to win with three balls to go in the last over, with two wickets in hand. Ian Meckiff swung a ball over Hunte's head at midwicket and began to run. Hunte chased the ball almost to the boundary and flung a perfect return to the wicketkeeper Gerry Alexander, who took off the bails, just beating the outstretched bat of Wally Grout. The batsmen had taken two runs and now the scores were tied. The next ball, Ian Meckiff was run out by an equally brilliant throw from Joe Solomon and so came about the first tied match in the history of cricket.

Conrad Hunte was never to forget that Australian tour. The West Indies team were beaten 3-2, but emerged national heroes.

The eldest among nine children, Conrad was brought up amidst poverty by a father who was keen that his children should be well educated. Young Conrad was often thrashed because he clearly preferred cricket to studies. His rise from playing with friends to school team, regional team and to the Barbados eleven was smooth and steady. He was the solid opening batsman who could adjust his technique as the occasion demanded.

In one of the earlier state matches against British Guyana, Hunte got out caught in the leg trap, pushing at inswingers on his middle stump. Studying this weakness, he took leg stump guard and left the inswingers alone until he was sure he could push them towards midwicket for one's and two's.

Some years later, playing league cricket in England, he found himself getting out caught at mid-on or mid-off when he intended the ball to go along the ground. He was off driving and on driving the ball even when it was not a half volley. While this did not matter on the hard and true wickets of Barbados, in England the ball came to the bat much more slowly. Thus he was hitting the ball 'on the up', offering a catch rather than hitting a boundary. He altered his technique, played more carefully at the beginning of the innings and runs began to flow once more.

Hunte's entry into international cricket was spectacular. He began with 142 against Pakistan, followed it up with a monumental 260. His partner for most of the time was Sobers, who went on to score 365 not out, eclipsing Len Hutton's record individual score of 364. The series was productive for Hunte, 622 runs at an average of 77.75.

Further success followed in India, Australia and England. Hunte had sweet memories of the 1963 tour of England under Frank Worrell. The team had asked Hunte to play the sheet anchor role while the stroke makers went for their shots. Hunte did this admirably, scoring 182 runs in the first Test and a further 108 not out in the final Test. The Windies beat England 3-1 to win the series.

At his peak, Hunte was the best opener of his time. But that did not prevent him from looking around and understanding that life was not just cricket. Touring India in 1958-59, he was appalled by the poverty and squalor. Not that the West Indies was a rich nation, but there was something degrading about the Indian poverty he saw. In his book, 'Playing to Win', he wrote: "Our first drive from Santacruz airport to Bombay gave me a shock which I could not forget. Hundreds of people were sleeping by the roadside while others bathed and washed their clothes in murky pools. Later, I was to see and sidestep some of the hundreds of thousands who lived on the pavements, and children whose hands and feet had been deliberately mutilated so that they could be better off as beggars. The hovels and conditions of sanitation in which men, women and children lived were worse than anything I had up to then seen anywhere."

Unusual thoughts for someone who should have been thinking of contracts, more money, Test hundreds and so on. But then Conrad Hunte was different.

In Australia in 1961, under instructions from Worrell, Hunte delivered a number of speeches, emphasising the 'universal brotherhood' that was brought about by cricket. Publicly he swore that he would seek team spirit for selfishness, character for fame, and humility for arrogance. The response to these talks was good and members of the Moral rearmament group invited him to watch a film, 'The Crowning Experience'. One of the stars of the film was Louis Byles of Jamaica. The film was a musical, based on the life of Mary Mcleod Bethune, the Negro daughter of slave parents, who founded the first Negro university in the US and became advisors to president Roosvelt. The main theme of the film was faith in God. Hunte was deeply impressed. The friends who had induced Hunte to see the film had a role for him in the Moral rearmament programme. He met leading members of the MRA group who believed that many of the problems in the world existed because most people tended to follow the traditional saying, ''Thou practiseth not what thou preachest'.

Hunte then met the 82-year-old spiritual leader of the MRA, Dr Frank Buchman, and soon decided to offer his life to God even while playing cricket. He often communicated with the Almighty, asking Him advice and guidance. He had to follow absolute standards and that meant paying back the headmaster of his school the sum of five shillings which he had stolen from the school funds, and also returning to his father the money which he had taken without asking from the family purse. He returned to the West Indies cricket Board the sum of ten pounds which he had cheated on expense accounts during the trip to Pakistan in 1958-59.

Back home in Barbados, he patched up a long-standing quarrel between his parents and one of the brothers who had left home in anger. Now, under the soothing guidance of Hunte, the families are together, without any bitterness.

Later in his life, he helped the black man to fight peacefully for his rights.

Indeed, as in cricket, in life too he played to win.