Maurice Foster… a jewelled tabletennis gift to cricket
Last week we reported on Maurice Foster’s exploits as a young table tennis player as well as his early first-class cricket career. Today, in the final of this two-part series, Foster’s Test cricket career is explored as well as his reflections on his playing days and advice he offers to young cricketers.
Centuries in 1969 — 122 at Kensington Oval against Barbados, and 135 at Sabina Park against the Guyana — meant Foster had booked his place in the West Indies team for the three-Test tour of England in June and July.
The home team won the series 2-0, but for Foster it was a forgettable tour. He made four, and three, in the first Test batting at number seven, as West Indies, led by Sobers but with a number of new faces, lost by 10 wickets.
Foster was promptly dropped, missing the remaining two Tests. For him, that experience was the kernel of a thought that grew and took root over time. He developed the strong impression that regional selection policy was one he “should be wary of”.
Says he: “Jamaicans never seemed to get selected easily but they got dropped easily.”
But he was also bitterly disappointed with his own performance on that England tour in 1969.
“I had one good score…against [English County side] Somerset,” he recalled. Foster says he was offered a professional contract by Somerset but declined.
“I turned it down because I had a good job at Berger Paints and the money that was being offered couldn’t really support my family,” said Foster, then newly married and a young father.
Later, he got an offer from another English County, Kent, but again declined for similar reasons.
The 1970 Caribbean regional season was modest at best for Foster. A second-innings 79, opening the innings against the Combined Islands in Castries, St Lucia, was his top score.
A high point was his always valuable off-spin bowling, claiming five for 76 against Trinidad and Tobago, albeit in a losing cause on a typically spin-friendly Queen’s Park Oval pitch.
Foster’s off-spin was sometimes ridiculed as “non-turning”, but as he is quick to point out, therein was its deceptive value.
As explained by him, he relied heavily on over spin
— twirling the ball over the top of the fingers
— rather than side spin. That meant the ball would often run on straight towards the batsman rather than deviating as the typical off-break would.
Right-hand batsmen playing for turn ran the risk of edging to wicketkeeper and slip. Left-handers, on the other hand, were at risk of being bowled between bat and pad.
In 112 first-class games, Foster captured 132 wickets.
Usually asked to bowl to defensive fields at the highest level, he took nine wickets in his 14 Tests.
In July/August of 1970, Foster was among senior players in a development tour of England led by McMorris. Talented young stroke-makers Lawrence Rowe, Sam Morgan, Anthony Campbell and opener/wicketkeeper Desmond Lewis, were part of that squad which played four games against county teams.
For Foster, the highlight was 110 against Sussex at Hove as Jamaica won by an innings and 88 runs.
The following year, 1971, Foster had a dream start to the regional domestic season with 146 and 56 run-out, batting at four against Trinidad and Tobago in late January. That triggered thoughts he would be in the West Indies team for the first Test at Sabina against touring India the following month.
But in his only innings for Jamaica in a drawn four-day warm-up against the visitors, Foster was again run-out for zero. The run-out was a mode of dismissal which dogged Foster throughout his career.
He had to wait until the last two tests of that ’71 Indian tour, which the home team lost 0-1, before making the playing 11.
In the drawn fourth Test at Kensington Oval he was unbeaten twice for 36 and 24, batting at number seven.
Then came what Foster considers to be his best innings, before dramatically falling for a first-innings 99 in the fifth Test at Port-of-Spain. The drawn game, which will be forever remembered for Sunil Gavaskar’s century and double century in his début Test series, ensured India’s first-ever Test series victory against the West Indies.
Batting like a dream at spin-friendly Queen’s Park, Foster had already dealt with the threat of vaunted Indian spin trio Erapalli Prasanna, Bishen Singh Bedi, and Sri Venkataraghavan, when disaster struck with him on the brink of glory.
His mind on a single to third man in order to get to three figures, Foster was cramped for room as he attempted to late cut a delivery from the medium pacer, Abid Ali. He miscued completely, under-edging the ball on to his stumps.
For thousands watching live at Queen’s Park and the untold multitude listening to radio commentary, the dismay of that moment would last a life time.
Asked if he cried, a reflective Foster said: “I think so…”
As explained by him 53 years later, “The entire Queen’s Park was applauding the hundred before it came and I am thinking I want to get this hundred and I tried to cut, it was too close… I picked the wrong one.”
Rowe’s epic double century and century on Test match début at Sabina was among the highlights of five drawn Test matches on New Zealand’s first ever tour of the Caribbean in ’72.
Foster’s scores of 28 not out, 13 not out, 23, 3, 22, 4, in the first three Tests were not considered good enough. He was replaced for the final two Tests by the exciting 23-year-old Guyanese left hander Alvin Kallicharan. The latter promptly made an unbeaten century on début at Bourda in Georgetown and followed up with another at Queen’s Park.
For Foster, now the Jamaica captain, the elusive Test century came in 1973 against Ian Chappell’s touring Australians in the drawn first Test at Sabina Park. It came amid good batting form for Foster in the regional domestic season
— including centuries against Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana.
By then, the adored Guyanese batsman Rohan Kanhai had replaced fellow master, Sobers, as West Indies captain.
At Sabina, Foster
— in the absence of Sobers, who missed all five Tests against Australia
— was in the all-rounder’s role, batting at number six and bowling 66 overs across both innings.
It was a hugely satisfying feeling for Foster and his adoring fans that his first-innings 125 came on home soil against an Australian attack of high calibre. Led by the legendary fast bowler Dennis Lillee, the Australian bowling also included fast-medium swinger Max Walker, another fast bowler Jeff Hammond and wrist spinner Kerry O’Keefe.
However, for Foster, a superior innings was his 99 against India in Port-of-Spain two years earlier, because of the high degree of difficulty.
“That pitch (Queen’s Park) was turning and difficult,” he says.
Following his Sabina century, Foster had scores of 18 not out, 12, 25 (opening the innings) and 34 before missing the fourth Test in Guyana after dislocating a finger.
He had felt he was fit enough to play since he was practising and “everything going fine”. But the team management felt otherwise.
According to Foster, “the irony is that they asked me to be 12th man
— emergency fielder”.
In the fifth Test, he was back, again pressed into opening alongside Roy Fredericks, making 29 and 19.
On the highly successful Kanhai-led West Indies three-Test tour of England in 1973, which the visitors won 2-0, Foster played in only the final Test, falling for nine.
Two dominant centuries in the 1974 regional domestic season ensured his place in the Test squad against Tony Greig’s touring England, but he saw action in only the fourth Test in Guyana. He never reached the batting crease since rain and notoriously poor drainage at Bourda robbed the game of 13 hours and 26 minutes.
From the boundary’s edge, Foster watched the exploits of rising stars Rowe and Kallicharan during that England tour. He rates Rowe’s epic 302 at Kensington Oval as the best Test match innings he has ever seen.
Citing personal reasons, Foster declined the Clive Lloyd-led five-Test tour of India in 1974-75, which was followed by a two-Test tour of Pakistan.
He was part of Lloyd’s triumphant squad which lifted the inaugural One-Day International (ODI) Cricket World Cup in England in 1975 but was a bystander for all the games.
Foster was not selected for the 1975/76 tour of Australia, which the West Indies lost 1-5 against the deadly Australian pace-bowling quartet of Lillee, Jeff Thomson, Walker, and Gary Gilmour.
To the disgust of Jamaicans, Foster was also omitted in all four Tests of India’s tour of the Caribbean in early 1976.
He also missed the tour of England a few months later, which the visitors won 3-0 as West Indian batting and fast bowling excelled.
A masterful double century against Trinidad and Tobago in January 1977 no doubt influenced the selectors to include Foster in the first Test against Mushtaq Mohammed’s touring Pakistan at Bridgetown, the following month.
But though he took three wickets, scores of 15 and four meant Foster was out for the rest of that thrilling five-Test series, which West Indies won 2-1.
Such was the discontent in Jamaica at what many saw as Foster’s ill-treatment, placard-bearing protestors turned up at Sabina Park on the first morning of the fifth Test against Pakistan chanting, “No Foster, no Test…”
But the quality of cricket as West Indies surged to a 140-run win was exceptional and much of that discontent was soon forgotten.
Foster was now approaching his 34th birthday and with the proliferation of gifted young West Indian batsmen, he may well have thought his Test career was over.
But the entrance of Australian television entrepreneur Kerry Packer with his World Series Cricket changed the game forever and ensured yet another Test match for Foster at Sabina.
Tension between the West Indies Cricket Board and Clive Lloyd, as well as star players who had been contracted by Packer, led to a complete breakdown approaching the third Test.
Lloyd and other leading players withdrew from the West Indies squad.
Kallicharan took over a youthful, largely untried group for the final two Tests.
Before then, the Australian cricket authorities and their leading players had also fallen out because of World Series Cricket. The touring side, youthful and under-strength, led by the Australian captain and opening batsman of the 1960s Bobby Simpson
— induced from retirement
— had already been easily beaten by Lloyd’s men in the first two Tests.
The West Indies selectors called on Foster for the final Test at Sabina
— watched by large crowds despite the absence of the World Series stars. He failed, managing just eight and five run-out in a game which ended in a controversial draw after spectators rioted on the last afternoon with West Indies staring down the barrel.
His playing days over, Foster served for several years in administration, representing Jamaica Cricket Association on West Indies Cricket Board.
He also spent many years as a broadcaster, commentating cricket and as a sports caster
— roles he enjoyed immensely.
Foster played golf for Jamaica after retiring from cricket. He declares with relish that he is one of very few to have played three sports for his country: table tennis, cricket, and golf.
Now 80 years old and largely immobilised because of a fall last year which left him with a badly damaged knee, Foster resides in comfort with his daughter Toni in the hills overlooking Montego Bay.
Looking back over his cricket career, Foster
— who received the national honour, Order of Distinction, Commander Class in 2007
— says he particularly enjoyed regional competition and leading Jamaica between 1973 and his final first-class season in April 1978.
He speaks enthusiastically of the best West Indies players of his time. For him, batsmen Vivian Richards, Brian Lara, and Sobers are top of the heap, although he insists the triple century by the technically correct, incomparably elegant Rowe in Bridgetown was the best innings he has seen.
Behind Sobers, Lara and Richards, he ranks Kanhai, “a high-quality batsman”, ahead of Lloyd, and the great opening pair Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes. Of the last two, he speaks with awe of their running between wickets…“They didn’t call, they just ran.”
Foster rates the top three West Indies fast bowlers he has seen as Malcolm Marshall, Andy Roberts, and Michael Holding.
“Andy was deceptively quick…very quick. He had this dangerous slower bouncer as well as a very fast bouncer and most times you got [trapped] in-between…,” he recalled.
Among spinners, he describes off-spinner Lance Gibbs
— who, for a long time, was the top West Indies wicket-taker
— as the best he played against.
However, the one providing the most mystery was the Trinidadian left-arm wrist spinner Inshan Ali, especially at Queen’s Park.
“I couldn’t pick [read] him at all [from the hand or through the air], I had to play him off the pitch…,” said Foster.
He rates a century he made against Inshan at Queen’s Park among his best innings, with the wrist spinner “doing all sorts of things” on a “dust bowl” of a pitch.
Inshan apart, Foster says he also played fellow Jamaican right-arm wrist spinner Arthur Barrett off the pitch.
He scoffs at the suggestion that some batsmen rely on reading the seam of the spinning ball through the air. “By the time yu do that, yu out already,” said a dismissive Foster.
Nowadays, he spends much of his time watching cricket on television and has strong views regarding ultra-popular Twenty20 (T20) cricket.
Batsmen should bear in mind, he says, that while T20 cricket “is all about scoring quickly, you don’t have to hit the ball out of the ground to score quickly”.
Also, he believes a strong grounding in traditional cricket should be a must for those who play T20s.
“We have to concentrate on the regional four-day format in order to develop batsmen [even in T20 cricket] because you can best make the adjustment from the longer version to the shorter version,” Foster said.
His advice for young players seeking to make cricket a profession is simple: “There is a lot of money in the game these days, take it seriously, practise as often and as much as you possibly can, and look to improve on weaknesses. That’s the way you are going to succeed.”
