Maurice Foster… a jewelled table tennis gift to cricket

A first-class record of 6,731 runs with 17 centuries and an average of 45.17 between the early 1960s and the late 70s is evidence enough that Maurice Foster is among the best ever batsmen to have represented Jamaica.

He also played 14 Test matches for the West Indies, averaging 30.52 at a time when stiff competition for places in the regional team and notoriously fickle selectors meant cricketers were constantly looking nervously over their shoulders.

Yet, but for a falling out with Jamaica’s table tennis authorities, Foster may well have been lost to cricket.

Maurice Linton Churchill Foster
— immortalised by cricket’s premier record keepers as MLC Foster
— was born on May 9, 1943 at Retreat, St Mary, to parents Audley George Foster and Olga Louise Foster.

At about 10 years old the young Foster and his entire family moved to Kingston after his father, in search of a “better life”, secured a job at the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation.

Foster’s first contact with organised sport came when, on arrival home from school one fine day, he discovered table tennis equipment, including a table, in the garage.

He and his siblings were told by their father, “This is the game you are going to play.”

Foster believes his father got the equipment from work where employees played table tennis during breaks.

Supervised and coached by their father, Maurice and his younger siblings, Dave and Joy, took to table tennis like ducks to water, playing their part in a glorious period for Jamaica in that sport in the 1950s and 60s.

Incredibly, at age eight, Joy made the
Guinness Book of World Records for her achievements in table tennis during national and regional competition.

Over the next several years the three Foster children covered themselves in glory, winning national and regional table tennis titles. They even excelled further afield in Germany and the United States.

Back then, Jamaica’s table tennis was at an all-time high and the sky appeared to be the limit for the Foster siblings in that sport.

Then suddenly, everything came crashing down with all three leaving the sport while still in their teens.

According to Foster, they were part of a Jamaica team in Guyana when the team manager (name withheld) started “cursing [expletives] and going on bad”.

He recalls saying, “You can’t be going on like that in front of my little sister” and the manager responding, “I can do anything I want…”

The incident led to a letter of complaint to the table tennis authorities. But, says Foster, instead of getting “justice”, he and his siblings were all suspended. The executive had taken sides with the team manager, says Foster.

A proud man Audley Foster, as head of the family, decided that his children would never again play table tennis for Jamaica while that administration and, more specifically, the offending team manager remained in charge.

It meant an end to their table tennis career, though they would play competitively in one final tournament in the USA, thanks to sponsorship organised by then Jamaican premier Norman Washington Manley.

“We retired from table tennis,” said Foster reflectively. “I was 18, Dave was 16, and Joy was 14.”

By then he had already shown his talent in other sports, including cricket and football, representing his school Wolmer’s Boys’. However, in those early days table tennis was his favourite sport.

“At Wolmer’s I was confused when it came to sport. I was representing the school in Manning Cup football, cricket, hockey, lawn tennis. I was the complete ball player but my first love was always table tennis,” Foster said.

He even represented Wolmer’s in Class One high jump at the annual high School Boys’ Athletic Championships (Champs). “I came about second to last,” says Foster, laughing at the memory.

With the table tennis phase of his life over, Foster turned to cricket full-time. And his prowess with the bat very quickly drew national attention.

A dominant right-handed stroke-maker, he found that his years of playing table tennis had fine-tuned him for batting in terms of eyesight, reflexes, and footwork.

His onside play was phenomenal.

Bowlers found that deliveries aimed at Foster’s stumps were summarily whisked away in the wide arc between mid-on and fine leg as his right (bottom) hand and strong wrists took over.

His flexibility of wrist and footwork meant it was easy to find gaps in the field, allowing him to constantly turn over the strike.

Down the years, his skill at table tennis also became a source of much amusement in cricket circles as those unfamiliar with Foster’s background, or, who chose to ignore his reputation, faltered against him at the table.

Among Foster’s favourite stories is that of Dilip Sardesai, one of the top Indian batsmen of the 1960s and early 1970s, and West Indian champion all-rounder Garfield Sobers, considered by many to be the greatest cricketer ever.

Foster says that Sardesai having done his “homework” discovered Foster’s background in table tennis. He then offered a bet to Sobers
— a very good table tennis player
— that the latter couldn’t beat Foster.

Never one to back away from a challenge, Sobers took the bet and lost badly.

A laughing Foster says Sardesai pocketed his winnings and “never gave me a cent”.

Good fun aside, Foster
— reflecting on the range and flexibility of cricketing strokes his table tennis background had facilitated
— says he would “recommend to anybody who is playing the game of cricket to also play table tennis”.

One stroke
— a flick through his legs towards fine leg, with his front foot in the air
— became the stuff of legend, described in Jamaican cricket folk culture as ‘The Dog…’

As explained by Foster, that fine-leg flick, with front leg upraised, came about after he was hit on the toes by a fast, full-length delivery
— a crunching yorker.

“After that I often instinctively lifted my foot to avoid getting hit there again,” he said.

His offside play was also strong, particularly the cut, square of the wicket, and late, behind point, while his driving off the back foot through cover and mid-off was assured.

But for all those who saw Foster bat, it’s his onside play that dominates the memory.

He tells of being watched by the legendary West Indies and Jamaica batsman of the 1930s, George Headley, who became a Jamaica national coach in later life.

“He [Headley] came to training one day while I was practising…He called me to him and said, ‘Youngster, somebody just suggested that you play too much on the onside but listen to me, every man [batsman] has a shot that belongs to him, and if it’s your thing don’t change’,” Foster said.

Almost as an after-thought, Headley added: “Don’t tell Allan Rae I told you that.”

Rae, who formed a legendary West Indies opening pairing with Trinidadian Jeffrey Stollmeyer in the late 1940s and early 50s, became a leading cricket administrator following his playing days. He was renowned for his insistence that young players should “play straight”, in the ‘V’, between mid-on and mid-off.

But while recognising the great value of playing straight in defence, Foster, like Rae, a member of Kingston Cricket Club, was never a dedicated apostle of the play-straight philosophy.

“If you only play in the ‘V’, you will never score any runs because there is always a fielder there [at mid-on and mid-off],” he argues.

In his late teens, Foster dominated the urban schoolboy Sunlight Cup cricket competition, breaking the record for most runs set by Rae many years earlier.

Alongside Gladstone Robinson of St Jago High School, Foster starred for the Jamaica All-Schools team against visiting Barbados. That was the product of a reciprocal arrangement of six decades ago.

So impressed was the great Everton Weekes
— of Three Ws fame
— who managed the Barbados team, that he told the Jamaica Cricket Association he expected to see both teenagers in the Jamaica squad for regional competition.

That didn’t happen because, according to Foster, the powers that be considered them too young.

But by January 1964, Foster was in the Jamaica team making a name for himself against a Cavaliers 11 out of England. That squad included famous names
— some approaching the end of highly successful careers. Among them were Denis Compton, Tom Graveney, Roy Marshall, Fred Trueman, Jack Hobbs, Ted Dexter, and Trevor Bailey.

Foster’s unbeaten 136 in the second game of the three-match series against the Cavaliers 11 confirmed the arrival of a young batsman of special talent.

So it was then, that in February 1964, three months before his 21st birthday, Foster was on regional first-class début against a near full strength Barbados (Sobers was absent) at Kensington Oval, Bridgetown. The Jamaicans had to contend with the fearsome pace trio of Wes Hall, Charlie Griffith, and Richard Edwards at full throttle.

“I was out even before I even got to the middle…,” said Foster as he recalled walking at number three to face the new ball, mere minutes behind openers Easton McMorris and Teddy Griffith. He made 0 and three, dismissed by Hall in the first innings and Griffith in the second.

“Those two [Hall and Griffith] were fearsome. One of the most fearsome pair in cricket I would face just leaving school…,” Foster said. His failure notwithstanding, a brave second-innings century from Renford Pinnock, following a first-innings 68, and an unbeaten second-innings 73 from Captain Jackie Hendriks earned Jamaica a famous draw on Bajan soil.

Foster was dropped for the rest of the season, yet he remained upbeat, having decided that “I will work even harder to get back in the (Jamaica) side”.

He was in and out of the national team in 1965 and 1966, but 147 against the Combined Islands at the Antigua Recreation Ground in 1967, opening the innings in the absence of McMorris; and 81 against Barbados at Kensington Oval meant he was now firmly in the regional selectors’ thoughts.

Next week: Foster’s Test career begins.