Clifford Roach in Australia in 1930 (Image: National Library of Australia)
Before the emergence of George Headley, who remains — statistically and by reputation — one of the greatest cricketers to play the game, there had been several good batsmen for the West Indies. However, the success of players such as Charles Ollivierre, George Challenor, Tim Tarilton, Wilton St Hill or Joseph Small came almost exclusively at first-class level. None had succeeded in Tests; they either did not get the opportunity or could not translate their success at a lower level into runs against international attacks. But there was one batsman who briefly shone in Test matches just as Headley made his debut. Although Clifford Roach never had the remarkable consistency or mental strength of Headley, he had notable success; he even became the first Test centurion and later the first double-centurion for the West Indies. But he was overshadowed by his team-mate, and suffers by comparison.
Clifford Archibald Roach was from Port-of-Spain in Trinidad and Tobago and played in the local competition, the Beaumont Cup, for Maple Cricket Club. Like several of his contemporaries, he features in the famous Beyond a Boundary (1963) by C. L. R. James, who characterised Maple as “the club of the brown-skinned middle-class” which rejected any cricketers “with a distinctly dark skin”. A substantial part of Beyond a Boundary concerns how James agonised over which team to play for after leaving school; it was Roach’s father who persuaded James — who like Roach had a darker skin than would usually have been acceptable to the club — to join Maple. But James — who is often surprisingly silent regarding cricketers with whom he must have spent a lot of time — has little to say on Roach. He describes him as “an untalkative but cheerful soul” who enjoyed many battles against the fast bowling of Learie Constantine. James, who worked as a teacher in this period of his life, also recalled giving private tuition to Roach, “and even coached him at cricket a little, though he was rapidly able to coach me.” Later, when he played alongside Roach for Maple, they opened the batting together.
As well as James, Roach received coaching from George John and quickly began to emerge as a player of distinct promise in Trinidad. His timing was fortunate; the reputation of West Indian cricket was in the ascendant following a successful tour of England in 1923, and a very competitive series against a strong MCC team in 1926. Trinidad, too, had emerged from a long spell under the shadow of a dominant Barbados team to become the strongest side in the Caribbean. Roach first played cricket for Trinidad in 1924 at the age of 19, but had no great success at first-class level before the 1928 West Indies visit to England.
This was a hugely important tour as it would include the West Indies’ first Test matches. Team selection was a hot topic in newspapers across the region, and long discussions of the merits of likely players occupied a period of almost eighteen months. The composition of the West Indies team was hindered by the convention that each of Barbados, British Guiana, Trinidad and Jamaica would contribute a certain proportion of players. The original intention was for Trinidad to have five players in the team, although only four actually took part in the tour — one selection, the wicket-keeper George Dewhurst, pulled out at the last minute, with catastrophic results for the balance of the side. The other Trinidad players had strong records: Learie Constantine had toured England in 1923 and was an accomplished and improving all-rounder; Joe Small, who had also visited England in 1923, was a very stylish batsman and good bowler; and Wilton St Hill had a record second-to-none and was probably the best batsman in the West Indies in the mid-1920s.
Clifford Roach (left) and Archie Wiles during the 1933 tour of England
But Roach was in the mind of the Trinidad selectors from an early date; he was one of nine players who were asked in July 1927 if they would be available to tour England. Largely based on his promise and his success with Maple — certainly not on his first-class record, which at the time consisted of four matches, no fifties, 171 runs and an average of 24.42 — he was chosen in the trial matches to assist with team selection. At the time, the most likely selection from Trinidad was a batsman called Archie Wiles who had a long and distinguished record at first-class level. He also, at a time when West Indies cricket was run by Europeans, who dominated every aspect of life in the region, had the advantage of being white. Although the success of Small and St Hill had challenged the traditional perception among the West Indian cricket elite that only white batsmen were good enough, discrimination against black cricketers lingered. Therefore, Roach’s 84 in the opening game — his maiden first-class fifty — was important, particularly as St Hill scored a century and Wiles failed. The latter was unsuccessful in the other two matches as well, despite being given every opportunity. Even though Roach achieved little after the opening game, he had done enough to be included in the West Indies team alongside St Hill; there was no room for Wiles, and the role of “veteran white batsman” was taken by Barbados’ E. L. G. Hoad.
Even allowing for his success and Wiles’ failure, it is still surprising that Roach was chosen for the tour on little more than potential. Several newspaper articles suggested that his excellent fielding was a big factor, and here he had the advantage of being twelve years younger than Wiles. Some reports even indicated that his ability to bowl played a part in his selection; but this was something he rarely did at first-class level. While he may have been a useful bowler on Trinidad’s matting pitches, he posed little threat on other surfaces and took just five first-class wickets in his entire career. And on the 1928 tour, he bowled only 48 overs, taking two for 194. Incidentally, the omission of Wiles was controversial, particularly in Trinidad; he was eventually chosen to tour England in 1933, when he was 40. Unsurprisingly, he failed badly.
The West Indies team at the Oval in May 1928. Back row: Wilton St Hill, George Francis, James Neblett, Frank Martin, George Challenor, Joe Small, Clifford Roach, Learie Constantine. Front row: Maurice Fernandes, Claude Wight, Karl Nunes, “Snuffy” Browne and Herman Griffith.
The tour of 1928 was a chastening one for the West Indies. The batting was an abject failure and all three Test matches were lost by an innings. Internal feuds and poor leadership from the captain Karl Nunes meant that no recovery was possible and results collapsed as the tour neared its end; the 1928 West Indies had one of the worst records of any touring side to visit England before the Second World War. However, Roach was a relative success with the bat, finishing fifth in the team’s first-class averages with 26.56. He did not score a century but managed nine fifties.
Roach played in the West Indies first ever Test match, a complete mis-match. While the West Indies bowlers impressed, the batsmen were helpless. Roach’s debut innings was ignominious: batting at number six, he was run out without scoring. His second innings was slightly more successful; although he made just 16 runs, he shared a partnership of 56 with Joe Small, who hit the West Indies’ only fifty of the game. For the next two Tests, Roach was the only success of the visiting team. Promoted to open, he passed fifty in both games, the only batsman to score a half-century in the series other than Small, although his highest score was just 53 (scored out of an opening partnership with George Challenor of 91 in 70 minutes) and his average 21.83.
The summer was successful in another way too as he qualified as a solicitor while the tour was ongoing. He joined several of his team-mates in having careers in the legal profession: Karl Nunes and Vibart Wight (the vice-captain) were also solicitors; C. R. “Snuffy” Browne was a barrister; and Learie Constantine was a solicitor’s clerk at the time and qualified as a barrister in the 1950s. Roach worked as a solicitor for the rest of his life — long after his cricket career ended and even after his health began to fail.
Nevertheless, after a tour during which several reputations were ruined completely and no batsman came to the fore, the promise shown by Roach was seized upon. His success led to predictions that he would succeed George Challenor — who at the age of forty was past his best — as the premier batsman in the Caribbean. But it was not to be; he remained inconsistent throughout his career, mainly owing to an unwillingness to defend and play the situation. Clayton Goodwin, in his Caribbean Cricketers from the Pioneers to Packer (1980), wrote: “Roach was in such a hurry to score runs and to entertain that he ignored tactical considerations at his peril. He would have suited present-day instant cricket, and would have interested the patrons of the commercial game.”
As the only new discovery from the tour, he continued to improve when he returned home. In the 1928–29 Intercolonial Tournament, he scored 48 in the first game against British Guiana, then in the final against Barbados, he scored 86, his first fifty for Trinidad as his team won by an innings. In October 1929, his scores of 26 and 72 could not prevent British Guiana winning the tournament but firmly established him as one of the leading batsmen in the Caribbean. Therefore, he was a certain selection when an MCC team arrived in the West Indies to play a four-match Test series.
The 1929–30 series was a strange one; the matches were only later confirmed as official Tests and their status was a little fluid when the tour took place. The English team was one of two MCC sides touring that winter and this uncertainty meant that the record books show that England played two Test matches on the same days (11 January 1930 and 21 February 1930) in different parts of the world. The need to send two English teams also diluted the available talent, and the team that toured the West Indies contained many veterans, including the 52-year-old Wilfred Rhodes and the 50-year-old George Gunn.
Nor were the home team at their strongest. As ever, selection for the West Indies was complicated by matters of finance and regional differences; a huge number of players appeared for the home side in the four Tests, many only selected on their home territory. The reason was that local selectors chose each Test team. In total, 27 players appeared for the West Indies in the series, and each Test had a different captain, selected from the host nation. Only two men played in all four Tests for the West Indies — George Headley and Roach. And for Roach, although he went into each game with a different opening partner, the series was a triumph. In the first match, which was drawn, he scored 122 on the first day to become the West Indies’ first Test centurion, and followed up with a 77 in the second innings. But nothing better encapsulates the wild inconsistency of Roach’s career than what happened next when the MCC visited his home island of Trinidad. In the two first-class games played against the tourists by the Trinidad team, Roach scored 2, 13, 9 and 0. In the Test match, he scored a pair, dismissed for 0 by Bill Voce in both innings, and England won by 167 runs.
Writing about the series in Cricket and I (1933), Learie Constantine recalled what happened next:
“Before his six failures Roach had been invited to play in British Guiana [the venue of the next Test], but after his disastrous experiences he did not know what to do and cabled offering to stand down and avoid embarrassing them if they wished to drop him. The Selection Committee replied instantly, telling him to come as he was very much wanted. Before Roach left, [the former West Indies and Trinidad fast bowler] George John, who had coached him in his early days, paid him a visit at his office.
‘Well, what are you going to do over there?’ asked John.
‘I am going to fight for the first hundred,’ said Roach, ‘and if they let me get that, then I am going to get my own back in the second.'”
According to Constantine, when the West Indies won the toss in that third Test, Roach and his opening partner Errol Hunte batted very carefully, scoring only 38 before lunch; Roach “took not the shadow of a chance, playing every ball with the utmost care in the very centre of the bat” and Hunte followed suite. Eventually, their partnership was worth 144 when Hunte was out but Roach went on to his century, and “with his reputation restored proceeded to make up longstanding arrears. He hit the bowlers as if with malice. No theory, no arrangement of field, could stop boundary after boundary, and despite his slow beginning, when he was caught in the last over of the day he had scored 209, as complete and satisfactory a reversal of ill-fortune as any day-dreamer could have wished.” He was out to the last ball of the day, having scored the first Test double-century for the West Indies; his team won on the fifth day by 289 runs, their first Test victory.
The final Test was something of an anti-climax for Roach; his scores of 15 and 22 made little impact on a match that lasted nine days before being drawn, after some huge scores. The series ended 1–1 which was probably a fair result even if it did not reflect the bizarre way that the two teams had been chosen. Roach scored 467 runs at 58.37 in the series, but even as he apparently established himself, he was eclipsed. George Headley scored 703 runs at 87.87, and was regarded as one of the world’s best batsmen — second only to Bradman, and perhaps surpassing him on difficult pitches — for the next decade. Roach will always be the first centurion and double-centurion for the West Indies, but after that series, his moment had passed.
It is worth remembering, when considering Roach’s success (Headley later proved himself in more difficult conditions against better bowlers) that the English attack was a limited one. During the series, Roach faced Ewart Astill, a 41-year-old medium paced bowler who never played a home Test; Nigel Haig, a 42-year-old fast-medium bowler who had played once for England in 1921 but was some way past his best; and Wilfred Rhodes, the 52-year-old legend who was nearing retirement and was little threat compared to his great days of thirty years before. The only bowlers anywhere near their peak were Greville Stevens, an erratic leg-spinning all-rounder who never quite reached Test standard; Les Townsend, a Derbyshire all-rounder whose formidable county record never translated to Test level; and Bill Voce, who was then a promising 20-year-old fast bowler some way short of his best and fearsome post-bodyline reputation.
The Trinidad and West Indies team-mates Clifford Roach (left) and Edwin St Hill (right) in Australia in 1930-31 (Image: National Library of Australia)
Given the limited nature of the England attack, perhaps it is unsurprising that Roach enjoyed by far his best series. He never again replicated this success at Test level. Although he was an obvious choice for the West Indies team that toured Australia in 1930–31, apart from an innings of fifty in the first Test he achieved little, too often falling to medium-paced bowling or to the Australian spinners. The West Indies team was out-matched in the first four Tests and only in the final Test was there a recovery. Roach played his part with two innings in the thirties; West Indies managed a creditable win by 30 runs. His only other success was a century against Victoria, but as he had been expected to be, alongside Headley, the leading batsman in the team, it was a disappointing tour. The suspicion was that he had been unable to temper his aggression; given the Australian approach at the time of strangling scoring opportunities, it is quite likely that he fell prey to his own impatience, not least as he made starts in many of his innings.
This lack of restraint, and a poor season for Trinidad, led to some calls for him to be omitted from the West Indies team that toured England in 1933. Nevertheless, he was selected and drew praise from Wisden, which stated: “If not nearly so sound as Headley, Roach was easily the best man in the team to watch, his batting on many occasions being brilliant to a degree. Nothing, indeed, in the whole tour was so dazzling as the innings of 180 Roach played against Surrey at the Oval.” That innings, lasting just 170 minutes and including a century before lunch, was his biggest success of a tour which brought him 1,286 runs 25.72, a poorer return than his debut tour five years before. His Test record was similar too; after a pair in the first Test, he scored half centuries in the other two games to finish with 141 runs at 23.50. For all his attractive strokeplay, his defensive play was poor, and post-mortems on the tour in the Caribbean seized on his unreliability. In an interview given when the players arrived home (and reported in the Jamaica Gleaner), the West Indies captain, Jackie Grant, defended Roach’s aggressive approach because it was attractive to spectators, and implied that he had been unwilling to bat lower in the order, a position several critics suggested would have better suited his approach.
Back in the Trinidad team, Roach scored the last of his five first-class centuries in September 1934 but was dropped from the West Indies team after playing the first Test against England in 1935. Although he was not yet 31, his Test career was over. There were frequent calls in the 1930s for him to be recalled, but while he continued to have success at first-class level, he never was. After playing on until 1937, he was dropped by Trinidad too, despite remaining on the fringes of the team. He continued to play for Maple a little longer, opening the batting for Maple alongside the future Test player Andy Ganteaume — who later recalled how Roach had “a mischievous sense of humour and a somewhat carefree disposition” — in 1939 and casually taking 14 runs from one over by an opposition fast bowler. His overall Test record — 952 runs at an average of 30.70 — seems low for someone of such evident talent, and disguises a career that consisted solely of peaks and troughs.
Roach was, however, far more than just a cricketer. He was just as famous in Trinidad and Tobago for his exploits as a footballer, although he perhaps never reached as wide an audience as he did in cricket. He played for the Maple team during the 1920s and 1930s, but also represented Trinidad at international level, competing in football’s version of the Intercolonial Tournament. One of his team-mates was Ellis Achong, who also played Test cricket for the West Indies. While there are no records readily available, Roach was still revered as one of the best players to appear for the island in the 1950s.
Roach spent time in England during the Second World War — although it is unclear why — and played several wartime charity matches for the various “West Indies” teams that appeared regularly around England. In these, he was joined by several of his former Test colleagues, including Constantine, Achong and Edwin St Hill. After this, Roach seems to have lived a quiet life and largely faded into obscurity. He could sometimes be found in the pages of newspapers, commenting on cricket issues of the day, and he enjoyed some fame in later years, when the West Indies were the strongest side in the world, by virtue of his status as the first man to score a Test century for the team. He was particularly impressed by the leadership of Frank Worrell in the 1960s, and maintained that he was the best Test captain that the West Indies had ever had.
At some point in the 1930s, Roach married Edna Violet Winter. The couple had nine children in total, several of whom eventually moved to England. Later, Roach struggled with diabetes. He also suffered from arteriosclerosis, made worse by his diabetes, and had to have one of his legs amputated in 1968. When his second leg also had to be amputated in 1970, he travelled to London — where many of his children lived — for the operation and to have artificial legs fitted. The costs were considerable: tickets to London for he and his wife cost J$433 (Jamaican dollars); the two legs cost a total of $500; and their expenses in London amounted to $220. However, the London-based West Indies National Association paid the costs of renting a flat, hiring a television and telephone, and for transportation to and from the hospital for his twice-weekly appointments.
A report in the Jamaica Gleaner in 1970 stated:
“When the weather is good in London … [Roach] goes window-shopping from his wheelchair. He is philosophic about his future life in Trinidad where he intends to continue with his career as a solicitor … On his future without a leg, Clifford Roach quietly says: ‘I admit to some fears about having to walk with two artificial legs. I had enough hell to walk with one. But it’s not good crying about it. I have had to adapt and accommodate myself to the problem.’ Let us applaud Clifford Roach, man with courage.”
Although many of his contemporaries — such as Small or the St Hill brothers — faded into obscurity and were forgotten once their careers ended, Roach remained a respected figure right up until his death in 1988. In 1984, he was entered into the Trinidad and Tobago Sports Hall of Fame for his sporting achievements. As late as 2008, he was honoured by the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation as part of their centenary celebrations. But at the same time, he suffered from playing at the same time as the peerless Headley; he barely features in Michael Manley’s History of West Indies Cricket (1995) except to be compared unfavourably with Headley. But there were few, if any, batsmen in the world in the 1930s who were Headley’s equal, and Roach should not be judged unfavourably for being a mere mortal. If his career was marked by inconsistency, his highs can never be equalled, simply because he was the first to get there. If he is remembered less today than he once was, at least Roach was one of the few West Indian cricketers from the 1920s and 1930s to receive the recognition that he was due.
Old Ebor 