50 Facts About Everton Weekes

Sir Everton DeCourcy Weekes, KCMG, GCM, OBE was a cricketer from Barbados.

Everton Weekes played in 48 Test matches for the West Indies cricket team from 1948 to 1958.

Everton Weekes continued to play first-class cricket until 1964, surpassing 12,000 first-class runs in his final innings.

Everton Weekes's family was poor and his father was forced to leave his family to work in the Trinidad oilfields when Everton Weekes was eight.

Everton Weekes did not return to Barbados for eleven years.

Everton Weekes attended St Leonard's Boys' School, where he later bragged that he never passed an exam and preferred to concentrate on sport.

At age 13 Everton Weekes began playing for Westshire Cricket Club in the Barbados Cricket League.

Everton Weekes would have preferred to have played for his local club, Pickwick, but the club only catered to white players.

Everton Weekes left school in 1939, aged 14, and, not having a job, spent his days playing cricket and football.

Everton Weekes later attributed much of his cricketing success to this time spent practising.

In 1943 Everton Weekes enlisted in the Barbados Regiment and served as a lance corporal until his discharge in 1947 and while he never saw active service, the fact he was in the military meant he was eligible to play cricket for Garrison Sports Club in the higher standard Barbados Cricket Association in addition to Westshire in the BCL.

Everton Weekes scored 88 and 117 retired and was selected for the tour, making his first-class debut on 24 February 1945, aged 19 years, 364 days, for Barbados against Trinidad and Tobago at Queen's Park Oval, Port of Spain.

Everton Weekes scored his maiden first-class half century in his next match, making 53 as an opener against Trinidad in March 1945.

Everton Weekes was one of the "Three Ws", along with Clyde Walcott and Frank Worrell, noted as outstanding batsmen from Barbados who all made their Test debut in 1948 against England.

Everton Weekes first met Walcott in 1941, aged 16, when they were team mates in a trial match.

Walcott believed that Everton Weekes was the best all-round batsman of the three, while Worrell was the best all-rounder and modestly referred to himself as the best wicket keeper of the trio.

Everton Weekes made his Test debut for the West Indies against England at Kensington Oval on 21 January 1948, aged 22 years and 329 days.

Everton Weekes was one of 12 debutants; seven from the West Indies and five for England; Jim Laker, Maurice Tremlett, Dennis Brookes, Winston Place and Gerald Smithson.

Batting at number three, Everton Weekes made 35 and 25 as the match ended in a draw.

Everton Weekes then made 90 in the Fourth Test in Madras, being controversially run out and 56 and 48 in the Fifth Test at Bombay.

Everton Weekes's five Test centuries in consecutive innings is a Test record, passing the record previously held by Jack Fingleton and Alan Melville as was his achievement of seven Test half-centuries in consecutive innings, passing the record previously jointly held by Jack Ryder, Patsy Hendren, George Headley and Melville.

Early in the tour the West Indian team's cricket kit disappeared and Everton Weekes was surprised to see Indian fishermen wearing flannels and West Indian cricket jumpers.

The next season saw no Test cricket played by West Indies but Everton Weekes scored 236* against British Guiana at Bridgetown, averaged 219.50 for the season and raised his career first-class average to 72.64.

In recognition of his performance, Everton Weekes was named a 1951 Wisden Cricketer of the Year.

Additionally, as the leading West Indian batsman, Everton Weekes was targeted by the Australian fast bowlers, in particular Ray Lindwall, subjecting him to Bodyline-like tactics of sustained short pitched bowling.

Everton Weekes would hold this record until June 1966 when surpassed by Gary Sobers.

In 1954 Everton Weekes was chosen as the first tenured black captain of Barbados and the second black captain overall following Herman Griffith's temporary captaincy in 1941.

Everton Weekes was the first West Indian to pass 3,000 Test runs, in 31 Test matches, and the first to score 4,000 Test runs, in 42 Tests.

When he first arrived in Bacup, Everton Weekes was greatly affected by the cold and took to wearing an army great coat everywhere, to the extent it became part of his League image.

Everton Weekes scored a total of 9,069 runs for Bacup at 91.61, with 25 centuries, including 195* against Enfield, a score that remains a League record, as does his 1954 batting average of 158.25.

Everton Weekes had success with the ball, taking at least fifty wickets in all but one season at Bacup, including 80 wickets in 1956.

Everton Weekes's performances were a significant contribution to League crowds, with over 325,000 spectators attending Lancashire League matches in 1949, a record as yet unsurpassed.

Everton Weekes played up for the crowds; batting in a match against Rawtenstall Cricket Club, Weekes waited until a ball had passed him before taking his left hand off his bat and hitting the ball around his back through square leg for four.

Everton Weekes had a classic batting style, possessed a variety of shots on both sides of the wicket, and is considered one of the hardest hitters in cricket history.

Everton Weekes was compared to Bradman in his ability to keep the scoreboard moving and in using his feet to come down the pitch to slower bowlers.

Additionally, Everton Weekes was an excellent fielder, initially in the covers before moving into the slips, and produced a training manual entitled Aspects of Fielding.

Everton Weekes retired from Test cricket in 1958 due to a persistent thigh injury but continued in first-class cricket until 1964, his final first-class match being against Trinidad and Tobago in Port-of-Spain, scoring 19 and 13.

Everton Weekes passed 12,000 first-class runs in his final innings, becoming only the third West Indian, after Worrell and Roy Marshall, to do so.

Post-retirement, Everton Weekes would make occasional appearances in charity and exhibition matches, including for the International Cavaliers.

Everton Weekes participated in a Cavaliers tour of Rhodesia in the early 1960s, where he was the focus of racial discrimination, including having a match against a Bulawayo side moved to a substandard ground in a black area due to a local bylaw banning blacks from playing in a white area.

Such was his success, Everton Weekes was appointed coach of the Canadian side at the 1979 Cricket World Cup.

Additionally, Everton Weekes served on the executive of the Barbados Cricket Association for many years and helped develop many leading Barbadian players, including Conrad Hunte and Seymour Nurse, both deeply influenced by Everton Weekes.

Everton Weekes found time to work as a television and radio cricket commentator, known for his acerbic wit and deep knowledge of the game and began to play Dominoes and Bridge competitively, representing Barbados in regional Bridge championships.

In 1994 Everton Weekes was appointed as an International Cricket Council match referee, refereeing in four Tests and three One Day Internationals.

Everton Weekes published his memoirs Mastering the Craft: Ten years of Everton Weekes, 1948 to 1958 in December 2007, when it was announced that the book will be included in the curriculum of the Caribbean Civilisation Foundation course at the University of the West Indies.

Outside of cricket, Everton Weekes became a Justice of the Peace and served on a number of Barbados Government bodies, including the Police Service Commission.

In June 2019, Everton Weekes was placed in intensive care, after suffering a heart attack in Barbados.

All voters were allowed to nominate five players and while there was no disclosure of which five each voter chose, Wisden editor Matthew Engel revealed that Everton Weekes voted for Dennis Lillee and, as Sir Donald Bradman received 100 votes, it is obvious Everton Weekes voted for Bradman as well.

In January 2009 Everton Weekes was one of 55 players inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame and will choose new inductees to the Hall of Fame.

Everton Weekes had a Test batting average of nearly 97.92 in innings immediately after those in which he scored a hundred, the second highest for those who had scored five Test centuries.