Unshakeable, unflappable Haynes

When Des Haynes walked back from his last innings with a duck, he was assured he was in august company. Don Bradman, who himself had done the same thing, told him it was a good idea to end one’s career with a duck.

And what a career it was! Classical in stance, calm in poise, Haynes propped up the West Indies through so many crises that he, along with Gordon Greenidge formed the vanguard of his formidable team. As an opener he was supposed to blunt the malevolence of the new ball, but he consistently stuck around much longer. In fact, he is the only batsman to carry his bat through a completed innings on most occasions in international cricket -- seven times in one-days and thrice in Tests.

Desmond Leo Haynes was born in the village of St James, Barbados on February 15, 1956. A right-handed opening batsman, at 20 he first appeared in an all-conquering Barbados island side. A year later, he went out to opening the West Indies innings with Greenidge, another Barbadian. Haynes made 61, 66 and 55, half-centuries in his first three Test innings against Australia. But then he signed a contract with Kerry Packer’s renegade World Series Cricket and only returned to the West Indian side two years later, when Packer and the ICC reached a settlement.

Though externally carefree, Haynes’s game was serious, a constant reminder that before you prosper in the jungle of Test cricket, you first need to survive.

He liked to go on the back foot, especially on hard, fast pitches where the ball comes up to the bat. But he also mastered the slower, seaming pitches and the moving ball of England. He was a fine, classical driver, sending the ball back smoothly, his head studiously low. Let the ball be short, and he was more than willing to cut and pull to savage effect.

Haynes’s biggest asset lay in his concentration and patience. While others succumbed to rushes of blood and temper tantrums, he strove to be consistent.

The finest game he played is one other West Indians prefer to forget -- the one they lost against the lowly rated New Zealand at Carisbrook, Dundein. While many members of Clive Lloyd’s team earned disgrace by losing their temper, Haynes kept his peace. He played two of the most correct and disciplined innings of his career, becoming the first and only man in history to open the innings and being last man out in each innings. Adjusting his technique to counter the suspect pitch and movement off the seam, he took guard outside his crease and consistently played forward, making 55 out of 140 in the first essay and then 105 in seven and a quarter hours out of 212 in the second knock.

He had many legal wrangles with the West Indian cricket board in his later years, but his game wasn't affected. He left cricket with an awesome record:

Record