Wronged Cricketer, Wrong Man: The Controversial Tale of Fitz Hinds

Fitz Hinds in 1902, while playing for the a combined West Indies team against R. A. Bennett’s XI in Barbados

The first tour of England by a West Indies cricket team took place in 1900. It was a very low key affair, particularly after the visitors suffered heavy defeats in the opening games, causing the press and public lose interest. But results turned around so that when the team returned home, the overwhelming consensus was that the tour had been a success, and that the team had improved consistently throughout. At a time when the cricket-playing territories in the Caribbean were part of the British Empire, and life in those colonies was dominated by the white minority, it is perhaps unsurprising that ten of the fifteen players who formed the West Indies team were white. Most achieved little and have left little trace in the annals of cricket. The other five were black. Lebrun Constantine (who became more famous as the father of Learie) and Charles Ollivierre had the best batting records of the summer; both went on to have long and distinguished careers. The leading bowlers were the black professionals Tommy Burton and Joseph Woods. The final black player achieved little during the tour and even to those who follow cricket history closely is little more than a name. But of all the players who took part on that tour, the long-forgotten Fitz Hinds perhaps had more impact than any other, albeit inadvertently. An incident involving him in 1899, before he was selected for the tour of England, dragged the controversial (and as far as cricket in the Caribbean was concerned, very topical) issues of professionalism and racial discrimination into the spotlight. The dispute is not well-known but has received considerable attention in the academic world. But for all his importance, Hinds himself is largely a mystery; and, as it happens, even the name by which he is known in the cricket world is incorrect.

Anyone who looks on CricketArchive or ESPNcricinfo, or even in the pages of Wisden (which records his feat of taking ten wickets in a first-class innings), will find a man listed as Delmont Cameron St Clair Hinds. This person certainly existed, but he was not the cricketer Fitz Hinds. Nor will anyone who tries to find out more about Hinds have much luck in the usual places. His first-class career was brief and does not even include his greatest achievement because the 1900 tour of England never received first-class status.

However, Fitz Hinds shot to unwanted fame before he had been chosen for the West Indies. The story was rediscovered nearly thirty years ago by Professor Brian Stoddart and has featured in most academic studies of Caribbean cricket in this period. For it to make sense, a little more background is needed. Cricket had been introduced into the Caribbean as a recreation for white people, but had been gradually adopted by black and other non-white communities. However, in first-class cricket played between the various British colonies — the Intercolonial Tournament — the white selectors refused to include black cricketers in any of the teams. The Trinidad establishment was the most eager to include black players — not least because the leading bowlers on the island were black and any team without their inclusion was immeasurably weaker — but Barbados in particular was resistant and made it clear that its team would refuse to take the field against any opposition that included black players.

This racial discrimination was dressed up in more polite fashion. The ostensible reason for the omission was a desire for West Indian cricket to remain amateur. Throughout the Caribbean, there were several professional cricketers, and all were black. Their roles usually involved bowling to members in the nets rather than playing for clubs. However, in Barbados (although not in Trindiad, where black professionals appeared for Trinidad in first-class matches played outside the Intercolonial Tournament) it was unthinkable for these professionals to appear in representative cricket. The distinctions even spread further down the cricketing ladder. The premier competition in Barbados, the Barbados Cricket Challenge Cup (BCCC), was an all-white affair until 1893 when Spartan Cricket Club was formed for those non-white players who were refused admission to other clubs. But the intended membership was the emerging black middle-class, certainly not professionals nor even the working classes. At the same time, Fenwick Cricket Club was formed for working class black players, but it was excluded from the BCCC; instead it played “friendly” games against the other clubs, which Fenwick usually won by the end of the 1890s.

It was into this world that Fitz Hinds emerged as a talented cricketer in the late 1890s. He was one of the black professionals engaged by Pickwick, one of the all-white clubs, to bowl at members in the nets. Away from the cricket field, he worked as a painter. For reasons that are unclear (but could for example be explained if he had completed an apprenticeship as a painter and began working full-time in that role), he decided to leave Pickwick and play cricket as an amateur. The fall-out was considerable and even impacted on the 1900 tour of England.

Hinds attempted to join Spartan as an ordinary member (i.e. as an amateur, not a professional). Like all such clubs, acceptance of the application depended on the existing members and several were dubious at having an ex-professional at the club, particularly a man working in such a menial occupation as a painter. After some intense lobbying by his supporters, he was finally granted membership in mid-1899, but the other clubs in the BCCC were horrified at the idea of facing a former professional on the field. Pickwick were particularly unhappy as Hinds had been their employee. Even some of the Spartan members refused to take part in practice sessions with Hinds. But the attitude of those who refused to play against Hinds affected the integrity of the competition; their clubs were forced to field weakened teams which proved no match for Spartan, which won the BCCC for the first time. Hinds did moderately well, averaging 15 with the bat and taking 22 wickets with the ball at an average of under 7. His best performance came against his former club Pickwick, when he scored 24 and then took eight for 31.

The ensuing controversy — known as the “Fitz Lily affair” (according to Stoddart, “Fitz Lily” was a pseudonym of Hinds) — reverberated for some time. Although never publicly admitted, it was Hinds’ race that presented the biggest problem for the white clubs. In the world of Caribbean cricket at this time, “professional” was a synonym for black; and a professional cricketer always meant a black working-class cricketer. But colour was not the only factor. As Stoddart puts it, Hinds faced “intense pressure which arose from the social layering of Barbadian cricket, itself produced by the island’s sugar culture which allocated all members of the community a rank in its elaborately defined production hierarchy. It is important to note that colour was not the sole, or even the important, issue in the Hinds case; it was social position, as his rough treatment inside Spartan indicated. Barbadian cricket ideology and its imperial model demanded a minimum status for admission to its organized ranks.”

However, not every white player was opposed to Hinds taking part in the BCCC. One notable supporter was Clifford Goodman of Wanderers Cricket Club. He backed Hinds at the time and later wrote of him: “By his good behaviour, pluck and hard work in every department of the game, [Hinds] won golden opinions from even the bitterest of his opponents.” But even the differing attitudes among Hinds’ opponents had a deeper explanation: the social background of the white players, as Clem Seecharan has stated in Muscular Learning (2006). There were two distinct white classes in Barbados: the rich and influential plantation owners had always kept their distance from the merchants and commercial traders who formed the next “rung” on the social ladder and were regarded as “newcomers”. This distinction was also visible in cricket: of the two main white teams, Wanderers was the club of the elite, the plantation owners, while Pickwick was comprised of the merchant class. Seecharan writes: “Although [Pickwick] were no less accomplished cricketers, they still harboured an inferiority complex rooted in the old hierarchy. It is significant that the socially preponderant, and therefore more confident, Wanderers seemed to have evinced no opposition to the selection of a so-called professional (Hinds) by Spartan, the club of the coloured and black upper middle class.”

In this period, these older distinctions had begun to fade as in Barbados’ uncertain economic climate; for example, the commercial class had begun to buy plantations that were in financial difficulties. But cricket was further behind. Seecharan writes: “But the differential social distinction lingered, in this parochial little world, fostering a resilient taint on the new money of the commercial elite.” Wider society was somewhat more progressive than the cricket clubs; for example, the Barbados Bulletin complained about Hinds’ non-selection for the Barbados team that played in the Intercolonial Tournament. The editor of the Barbados Globe also took issue with Pickwick’s “stubborn refusal” to play against “poor coloured men”. Cricket, however, simply tightened the restrictions. While the 1900 tour was ongoing, Fenwick were refused full admission to the BCCC; they were allowed to play the other teams as an “associate member” but could not win the cup and once again several white players refused to take the field against them.

But the problem for Barbados cricket was that Hinds was clearly among the best cricketers on the island. And when the time came to choose a team to tour England in 1900, the selectors — appointed from each of the main cricket-playing territories in the Caribbean — picked Hinds. Furthermore, because he was no longer professional, he was chosen as an amateur, nominally of the same status as the white members of the team. To some in Barbados cricket, this was simply unacceptable. Another Barbados cricketer who had been selected in the West Indies team was Hallam Cole, a Pickwick player. When Hinds was chosen, Cole wrote to the selection committee threatening to withdraw if Hinds were selected as an amateur. He had no apparent issue with other black players in the team (including the two Barbados-born professionals Woods and Burton, who had moved to Trinidad to further their cricket careers, and the two amateurs Constantine and Ollivierre), but Hinds was the non-white Barbados-based player.

It should be made clear that the other two white Barbadian team members did not share Cole’s views. And he faced criticism from the press. The Barbados Globe hinted that Cole’s stated reason for withdrawal — Hinds’ amateurism — was not the full story. In other words, it was Hinds’ race rather than status that was the issue. Yet Cole’s apparent racism merely reflected Barbados society at the time: the ruling white minority excluded all other races from politics (through the inability to vote) and placed considerable obstacles (such as high interest rates) in the way of the their hopes of achieving financial prosperity. And, as Seecharan has pointed out, Cole “represented the more reactionary strand in white Barbadian racial attitudes,” because he came from the insecure second rung of white society, which perhaps felt more threatened by a perceived incomer like Hinds: “H.A. Cole belonged to the [commercial elite rather than plantation group]: he attended Harrison College and played for Pickwick. Therefore, the inflexibility of his response to the selection of Fitz Hinds bore evidence of all the social insecurities of the rising bourgeoisie: wealthy, but still dogged by their lower status in the white hierarchy with its assumption of superiority of the old planting families.” In the end, Cole did not tour. Hinds did, and was recognised as an amateur in England (for example, being listed as “Mr F. Hinds” on scorecards).

The West Indies team that toured England in 1900. Back row: M. M. Kerr, W. H. Mignon, G. V. Livingstone, P. I. Cox, W. C. Nock (manager); W. T. Burton, S. W. Sproston, C. A. Ollivierre. Middle row: W. Bowring, G. C. Learmond, R. S. A. Warner (captain), P. A. Goodman, L. S. Constantine. On ground: F. Hinds, J. Woods (Image: West Indies cricket history and cricket tours to England, 1900, 1906, 1923 (1923) by L. S. Smith)

Given all that led up to his selection though, it is perhaps unsurprising that Hinds struggled in England. Perhaps his presence on the tour was its own victory, but he would not have been helped by the conditions which were so alien to him and his team-mates. It took time to adjust to such matters as the slow pace of the outfield, the flat batting wickets, the different quality of light and the English weather. He managed to score two fifties, but only averaged 20 with the bat. He bowled little, only managing six wickets. Nevertheless, he did well as an occasional wicket-keeper (sharing the role with Constantine), for example taking five catches behind the wicket off the bowling of Burton against Norfolk. Perhaps his performances were a little disappointing, but writing in the 1901 Wisden, Pelham Warner judged that Hinds was “often useful in his peculiar style, and was a keen hard working cricketer.” S. W. Sproston, who took charge of many of the matches in the absence of the official captain, recalled in an interview printed in Cricket that August how, against Gloucestershire during an onslaught by Gilbert Jessop, Hinds “would not have a man out in the country [i.e. in the deep]. [Charlie] Townsend hit a ball which went past him towards the boundary, and two or three of the team were proceeding to go after it. But Hinds waved them back, calling out, ‘Leff all to me, I’m going for it’, and he went after it at a tremendous pace, leaving everybody else far behind.”

If Hinds had not set England alight, he remained a prominent cricketer afterwards. He continued to play for Spartan (and Cole and other white players continued to refuse to face him on the field) and became something of a popular hero. For example, when he was dismissed lbw for 43 against Pickwick in September 1900, the crowd noisily complained about the decision of the white umpire. A contemporary newspaper noted the danger of giving out a “favourite with the crowd”.

In January 1901, in the absence of any intercolonial competition that season, the white Barbadian A. B. St Hill took a team to Trinidad. The majority of St Hill’s team was from Barbados and included not only Hinds but several other black players (including two Barbadian professionals). The matches were judged to be first-class and therefore Hinds made his first-class debut when he played for A. B. St Hill’s XI against Trinidad in Port of Spain (ironically in a match that was played 12-a-side). He made an immediate impression, opening the bowling and taking ten for 36 in 19.1 overs (although this was a 12-a-side game, it is still recognised as first-class and usually included in lists of “ten wickets in an innings” even though eleven wickets fell in the innings). He took two wickets in the second innings but made less of an impression with the bat. In the second game between the teams, he bowled just two overs and again failed with the bat.

That September, Hinds played for Barbados for the first time, in the final of the Intercolonial Tournament (Barbados qualified automatically as the holders of the title) when he and Stephen Rudder became the first black players to represent Barbados. Presumably the realisation that if Hinds could represent the West Indies, he was good enough to play for Barbados (a point made by several English commentators in discussing the race-based selections of Barbados) led to his belated inclusion. And in the ultimate irony, one of their team-mates was none other than Hallam Cole, who must have overcome his objections by then. Hinds opened the batting in the first innings but achieved little with bat or ball. One letter to the Barbados Advocate before the tournament had suggested that Hinds was a “first-rate” wicket-keeper who should be played in that role, with someone else stepping in when he was bowling, but nothing came of this.

In January 1902, Hinds played for Barbados and a representative West Indies team (a “Combined Colonies” team that featured players from Barbados, Trinidad and British Guiana) against a touring English side led by R. A. Bennett. Presumably owing to injury, he did not bowl in any of the games. But opening the batting for Barbados in the first game, he scored 55 runs out of an opening partnership of 70, his first fifty at first-class level. During this innings he made quite an impression on the delighted crowd and bemused English team. Facing the slow leg-breaks of Ted Dillon, he switched hands after the ball had been delivered and tried to bat left-handed (in other words, what a modern spectator would call an attempted switch-hit) but seeing that it would not work, he turned his back to the bowler and hit the ball past the wicket-keeper. The Barbados Advocate recorded: “It was a novel stroke, and Bennett, who was behind the sticks, seemed rather uneasy when the ball was slashed past within a few inches of him. It was a stroke which required extreme agility and exactness, and we do not suppose any of our team beside Hinds would attempt it. It is unnecessary to say that the crowd cheered every such effort enthusiastically, and even the Englishmen were amused at the method of dealing with their attack.”

Despite this success, Hinds scored only 74 runs in four first-class innings across the three games (he also scored ten in a non-first-class game). After opening for Barbados, he batted down the order for the “Combined” team, which defeated Bennett’s team by an innings. When Barbados next played in the Intercolonial Tournament, in January 1904, Hinds retained his place and took a few wickets, but his only innings of note was an unbeaten 42 in the final (easily won by Trinidad). Yet he remained a certainty for Barbados and among the leading cricketers in the region. When Lord Brackley’s XI toured the West Indies in early 1905, Hinds played for both Barbados and in two representative matches for the West Indies. He played a few useful innings without reaching fifty, but took five for 41 in the second match between Brackley’s team and Barbados.

Those were Hinds’ final first-class appearances. In 12 matches, he scored 366 runs at 20.33 and took 29 wickets at 15.00. Yet if his record looks underwhelming, he was clearly respected enough to be a fixture in the Barbados team, playing every first-class match for the island between the tour of 1900 and the end of the 1904–05 season, and to be included in representative West Indies teams. And even more importantly, he was not just a beneficiary of parochial selection: he did not just play for West Indies teams chosen in Barbados, but was included by Trinidadian selectors when Brackley’s team toured in 1905. Therefore it was no reflection on his ability or his record that those matches marked the end of Hinds’ career in Barbados. He stopped playing because later in 1905, he emigrated to the United States.

Hinds continued to play cricket in the United States, although we have a record of only one game. In 1913, a privately organised (i.e. unofficial) Australian team toured North America. Many leading Australians, including the Test players Warren Bardsley and Charlie Macartney (and the former English Test player Jack Crawford) and the future Australian players Arthur Mailey and Herbie Collins, took part in the tour. One of the matches was played in Brooklyn, New York, a two-day game against the incongruously named “West Indian Coloured XI”, which had originally been called the “Cosmopolitan League” team. The game took place at Celtic Park, a ground run by the Irish-American Athletic Club, in Long Island, New York (it is wrongly listed as being in Brooklyn on CricketArchive, a mistake first made in Cricket in 1913). Hinds scored only one run in his only innings and did not bowl, injuring his foot in the field. He was replaced in the team by A. Marshall, and the Australians won by an innings.

If that was not quite the end of Hinds’ story, the final parts have remained a mystery until now because of a case of mistaken identity which caused his trail to go cold. The “Fitz Lily affair” was rediscovered by Brian Stoddart in the 1980s, and appeared in print in 1988, fully cited to contemporary newspapers and other publications (which was quite an achievement in the days before internet searches and digitised archives). Ten years later, the article was cited by Keith Sandiford in his Cricket Nurseries of Colonial Barbados (1998) but with one important difference. Sandiford identified Fitz Hinds as Delmont Cameron St Clair Hinds. This was subsequently accepted by all statistical authorities; Hinds is currently listed under that name by CricketArchive and ESPNcricinfo, and around this time, Wisden altered its record section so that credit for the ten for 36 against Trinidad in 1900–01 switched from “F. Hinds” (against whose name it had previously been listed) to “D. C. S. Hinds”.

Sandiford offered no evidence for this identification, nor have any of the people who have followed him in claiming that Fitz was really Delmont. There certainly was a man called Delmont Cameron St Clair Hinds; Barbados records show that he was born on 1 June 1880 and baptised in St Leonard’s Chapel in St Michael, Barbados, on 1 August 1880, the son of John Thomas Hinds (a coachman) and Jonna Hinds née Harewood, who lived on Westbury Road. However, there is no evidence to connect Delmont Hinds to Fitz Hinds. Quite how Sandiford (or whoever made the original link) settled on him as the most likely candidate is unclear. The identification, made at a time when records were hard to track down without a physical search, seems to have been somewhat haphazard. For example, there were other baptisms in Barbados around this time that could have been the cricketer, such as someone called Fitzhubert Alonzo Hinds, born in 1877 or Prince Arthur Alonzo Fitzgerald Hinds, born in 1899.

There are other issues around the claim that our cricketer was actually D. C. S. Hinds. For example, it is hard to see how the name Delmont Cameron St Clair could lead to a nickname of Fitz. Furthermore, all contemporary scorecards (rather than ones later transcribed onto computer databases like CricketArchive) list him as F. Hinds. While it could be argued that Caribbean newspapers might condescendingly use a nickname for a black cricketer, this does not quite hold true because Joseph Woods was known by the nickname of Float Woods but is listed on scorecards for the 1900 tour as “J. Woods”. A further problem with Hinds really being Delmont Cameron St Clair is that he was named on the list of incoming passengers to Southampton, alongside the other members of the cricket team, as “F. Hinds”, albeit with an erroneous age of 44. There are other reasons to doubt the identification. D. C. S. Hinds would have been 20 at the time of the 1900 tour, and only 19 when he joined Spartan. Given that he had been a net bowler before this, and had time to learn a trade as a painter, it seems unlikely that the actual Fitz Hinds could have been so young. A further problem is that D. C. S. Hinds has left no traces in any other records that can be traced online; this would be unsurprising if he had lived out his life in Barbados, but we know that Fitz Hinds emigrated to the United States, which kept copious records, almost all of which are readily available online. And in these, there is no record of a man called Delmont Cameron St Clair Hinds.

And it is these American records — unavailable to those first researchers in the 1980s and 1990s trying to find our man — that offer an alternative identity for Fitz Hinds. On 24 July 1905, a man called Fitzgerald Alexander Hinds arrived in New York from Barbados, on the S. S. Hubert. He was listed a 27-year old single man who gave his occupation as a painter. He had only $30 with him and was visiting a man called George McDermon, a Jamaican living in New York. This same man subsequently appears in multiple records, from census returns to certificates of naturalisation. While on other occasions he is listed as a porter, several records state that he was a painter. Could this be Fitz Hinds the cricketer? There are several elements that support such an idea: his birthplace of Barbados and his residence in New York (both of which we know applied to the cricketer; his address in 1913 — West 138th Street — was around nine miles from Celtic Park where we know Hinds played that year); his occupation; and the fact that “Fitzgerald” is a name far more likely to be rendered as “Fitz” than “Delmont Cameron St Clair”. It could also be argued that his age — a few years older than Delmont — makes it more likely that he could have achieved all that was recorded of the cricketer by 1900.

Fitzgerald Alexander seems a far more likely candidate for Fitz Hinds. Searches of the American records (which it should again be emphasised were impossible for earlier researchers) offer up no other realistic possibilities living in New York at the time. Incidentally, there is no obvious record of Fitzgerald’s baptism in Barbados, making it unlikely that he could have been found by anyone looking there in the 1980s or 1990s. And perhaps the clinching piece of corroboration that makes it likely that we have found the real Fitz Hinds is that the great-grandson of Fitzgerald Alexander Hinds was told by his father that the former had been a “world champion cricketer”.

Hinds’s signature from 1918

If we can be moderately confident that we have found the cricketer, the copious records taken in the United States allow us to fill in a lot of gaps about his life and learn what became of him once he emigrated. Fitzgerald Alexander Hinds was born on 17 September 1877 in Bridgetown, Barbados. He was the son of James Hinds (according to his death certificate) or Francis Hinds (according to his marriage certificate) Hinds and Annie Elkcott. The 1940 census reveals that he was educated until 8th grade (i.e. the age of 13 or 14); presumably it was after this that he began to learn his trade as a painter.

When Hinds arrived in the United States, he was already a father and might have had some complicated relationships. His first child, a son called Darcy, was born in 1902 but the identity of his mother is uncertain. Then in 1904, he had a daughter called Winifred with a woman called Maude Corbin (who might have been known as Maude Walcott). Hinds arrived in New York alone, but Maude soon followed (possibly a month later but definitely by 1906). In March 1907, they married in New York City; their second daughter was born the following month and in September 1907 their daughter Winifred (and Maude’s mother) came from Barbados to live with them. In total, the couple had ten children, from Winifred in 1904 to Maude in 1920.

A photograph of Harlem (showing Lenox Avenue from 135th Street) in 1939, very close to where Hinds and his family lived from their arrival in the United States until around 1935 (Image: From The New York Public Library)

Through the United States Census (as well as the New York Census) we can trace what happened to Hinds. The family lived in Harlem, Manhattan, for at least thirty years after their arrival in the United States. The area in which he lived gave birth after the First World War to what became known as the “Harlem Renaissance” — the intellectual and cultural explosion of art, writing and music from African Americans based in Harlem. The Hinds family lived close to the areas that became the centre of the movement. They clearly had no desire to return to Barbados because in 1925 Hinds and his wife became naturalised citizens of the United States.

However, Hinds’ occupation was prosaic. In 1910, he worked as a porter in a department store, but by 1915 he was working as an elevator operator. After this, he seems to have resumed his main trade as a painter, which was his recorded occupation (specifically a house painter) in 1920 and 1925. Perhaps this suggests a period of prosperity, where he could take on less menial jobs. But it did not last. Perhaps the Great Depression played a part, but by 1930 Hinds was again working as a porter, initially for a gas company. By 1940 he was based in an office building, earning a salary of $1,350. Sometime after 1935, the family relocated to the Bronx. It is hard to gauge what life was like for them. They always rented their accommodation and often took in lodgers. But the family stayed close: even in 1940, when all the children were adults, many of them (even the ones who were married) lived at home, as did several of the Hinds grandchildren and Maude’s mother.

Maude died at the family home in 1941 at the age of 53; the cause of death was “Broncho Pneumonia, Diabetes Millitus and Bronchial Asthma”. Fitz died on 30 December 1948 at Lincoln Hospital. He was still working as a porter at the age of 72; no cause of death is recorded on the transcribed online indexes.

The grave of Hinds and his wife, located in Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York (Image: Kenny Hughes (a.k.a. Kenneth G. Hughes) via Find a Grave)

In the 75 years since Hinds’ death, no-one outside the family realised that he was once a famous cricketer. Even though the “Fitz Lily affair” was rediscovered and retold, becoming a topic of some importance in the academic study of cricket in the Caribbean, no-one was quite sure what had happened to the man at the centre, the man who had inadvertently affected the first tour of England by a West Indies team and forced the cricket establishment in Barbados to take a long look at its attitudes towards race and class. While his cricketing skill is almost secondary to the story, it should not be forgotten that — even if not entirely reflected in statistics — Hinds was one of the leading cricketers in the West Indies at the beginning of the twentieth century; he was so good that Barbados abandoned its “white only” policy in the Intercolonial Tournament. He even, if we consider that one fleeting reference to an attempted switch-hit and Warner’s comment about “his peculiar style”, played in a way that might not be out of place today, happy to improvise and break convention on the field as well as off.

In short, such a cricketer should be remembered rather more than he is. And at the very least, we should make sure that we have identified the right man in order to give him due recognition.

“The greatest spin bowler West Indies ever produced”: Victor Pascall of Trinidad and Shannon

Victor Pascall in 1926 (Image: Wally Hammond: The Reasons Why (1996) by David Foot)

For a once-famous cricketer to be relegated to a supporting character in someone else’s story could have been frustrating; but it is unlikely that Victor Pascall minded too much because he was that kind of man. Particularly when the other person was, in this case, his nephew Learie Constantine. Pascall was once the best spin bowler in the Caribbean and his reputation as one of the greatest endured long after his premature death in 1930; his peak came too soon, just before the West Indies attained Test status. Although long since forgotten, traces of him survive through the connection with his nephew Constantine, not least in two famous books: Cricket and I (1933) by Constantine, and Beyond a Boundary (1963) by C. L. R. James. Even so, as with many West Indian cricketers from before the Second World War, there are huge gaps in our knowledge. Although we know he was born on 30 July 1886 in Diego Martin, we do not even know his full name: he was called Victor S. Pascall, but that middle name is otherwise a mystery. Fortunately, we know a little about Pascall’s family thanks to his nephew.

According to Learie Constantine, Pascall’s paternal grandparents were from the Niger Delta but had been captured by slavers and transported to South America, where they worked on the plantations of a Spanish-speaking landowner. It was there that Ali Pascall — Victor’s father and Learie’s grandfather — was born around 1809 (although as this would have made him 77 when Victor was born, this might be dubious). One day, Ali and a girl called Malvina escaped and — according to the story — stole a canoe which they used to travel to Trinidad. As they arrived, their canoe overturned and they lost what little they had brought with them. They walked until they arrived at a village called Maraval, where the Pascall family remained long after Victor’s birth. Constantine had few other details, and recalled that his mother and his grandparents were reluctant to discuss slavery, but he knew Ali and Malvina were extremely poor as they set up their new lives. Yet they tried to retain the traditions of their families, which were those of the Yoruba people, from what is today Nigeria, Toga and Benin. One example of that came from Constantine’s main memory of Ali Pascall — his open-casket funeral which took place around 1909 when he died at the age of approximately one hundred. His grandchildren (including Constantine) were sent in to see him and each one was lifted three times over the coffin before being told to go outside until after the burial. Constantine recalled asking why, to be told: “Because it was an African custom of the tribe grandpa came from.”

Unfortunately, it is not possible to pin down when or to whom Constantine told this story. The information comes from Gerald Howat’s 1975 biography of Constantine but does not seem to have been mentioned in any of Constantine’s numerous books. However Howat accessed many broadcasts by his subject, in some of which he discussed his upbringing; he also spoke to Constantine’s daughter Gloria and his brother Elias about family matters. Even if we cannot be completely sure where the story comes from, there is no reason to doubt that it is essentially true.

Maraval in 2009; Pascall was born in Diego Martin but it is likely he lived most of his life in Maraval (Image: Paul Lowry, Maraval Port of Spain, CC BY 2.0)

Constantine also wrote specifically about his uncle. In Cricket and I (1933), the first of his books, Learie Constantine fills in some details about how Pascall, of whom he was clearly very fond, came to play for Trinidad. The key figure was Learie’s father, Lebrun Constantine — a fine player in his own right, he was hugely influential in Trinidad cricket. More importantly, he had married Pascall’s sister, Anaise.

“In Maraval my father used to practise twice a week in a field near the house; his brother, St. Croix, another fine player, came often; and some of the labourers on the [cocoa] estate [where Lebrun was an overseer] were glad to have the pleasure of bowling at him. On Saturday afternoon as many as possible used to accompany him to town to see their team play in the competition. Among these practice bowlers was my mother’s brother, Victor Pascall, who bowled so well that my father carried him to town to play and brought him to the notice of the authorities, so that in 1905 [actually 1906] he and my father played for Trinidad against Barbados in the Intercolonial Tournament.”

But this is not quite the complete story because there was a whole other layer of cricket in Trinidad. Countless matches were played at a local level on pitches of matting laid over clay or soil: scratch games, trial matches, various local competitions under impressive sounding names like Pereira’s Cup or Davidson and Todd’s Cup (two examples from 1905). Pascall, like other Trinidad cricketers, emerged from this complicated picture. The most important competition — described by the press and participants as “first-class cricket” but not officially recognised as such — was the Bonanza Cup (named after The Bonanza, a huge department store in Port-of-Spain which played a role in its organisation and presumably provided sponsorship). One of the teams, Victoria Cricket Club, was captained by Lebrun Constantine and Pascall’s obituary in the Trinidad Guardian said that Lebrun “brought [Pascall] into the City to play for Victoria. He quickly jumped into fame and was responsible for the very fine performance of Victoria two years later.” We can date this quite precisely as the Mirror newspaper of Trinidad and Tobago first listed Pascall as part of the Victoria team in December 1904 and so presumably they won the Bonanza Cup in the 1906–07 season. The obituary in the Trinidad Guardian also revealed one early starring performance for Pascall: figures of five wickets for one run against Shamrock Cricket Club.

The Bonanza in an undated photograph (Image: Pinterest)

Pascall was a slow left-arm spinner whose chief attributes were flight and accuracy; from surviving photographs, his height may also have been an advantage. Learie Constantine was never too sure how Pascall had learned to bowl; the only left-arm spinner in Trinidad in Pascall’s youth was Sydney Smith, who later settled in England then New Zealand, and Constantine recalled that Smith’s style was completely different to Pascall’s. At a time when few quality teams toured the West Indies, it seems the most likely explanation is that Pascall was largely self-taught.

Pascall’s success for Victoria brought him to the attention of the Trinidad selectors and he was given an opportunity in the 1905–06 Intercolonial Tournament, the competition held each season between Trinidad, Barbados and British Guiana. That year, Trinidad were the hosts and Pascall made his first-class debut in the final at the Queen’s Park Oval in January 1906, when he played alongside Lebrun. Pascall had a quiet time — 25 runs for once out and one wicket for 26 runs from five overs — and did not represent Trinidad again until 1909, when he played twice against W. C. Shepherd’s XI. In the first match, he took three for 16 and two for 15; in the second he took four for 40 and one for 16. Later that season, he was part of the Trinidad team which won the Intercolonial Tournament, once again held in Trinidad; on the matting pitches he was a handful. He bowled little in the qualifying match against British Guiana to decide who would face the holders Barbados, but in the final he had match figures of four for 62 from 51 overs. After this, he held his place in the Trinidad team until 1927.

Although he had few spectacular performances, his steadiness with the ball (and occasional success with the bat) brought him selection in a representative West Indies team against a touring MCC side in 1913, when he took four for 83. By the time cricket ended owing to the war, he had scored 186 runs at 10.33 and taken 42 wickets at 17.50 (conceding 2.09 runs per over) in 13 first-class matches. We don’t know what he did during the First World War; he certainly continued to play for Victoria until 1916 (when the copies of the Trinidad Mirror available on the British Newspaper Archive cease) and resumed after the war.

Throughout this time, Pascall remained close to the Constantine family. In Cricket and I, Learie Constantine recalled how Pascall and Lebrun helped him to practise as a boy: “Sunday was a field day. Uncle Victor, now a full-fledged intercolonial and a great man (though not as great as my father), would come over sometimes and we played after breakfast (the mid-day meal in Trinidad) till dark. Often my mother kept the wicket, and in those days my sister was as hard to get out as any of the younger group.” As Constantine junior emerged into Trinidad cricket after the war, he began to play alongside his father and uncle, first for Victoria then for Trinidad. He recalled how Pascall was known to his team-mates — for reasons Constantine did not explain — as “Toy”, but Constantine usually referred to him by his other nickname: “Old Pa”. But the two Constantines and Pascall formed a key part of what became the fiercest team in Trinidad, one made famous in the pages of Beyond a Boundary when C. L. R. James wrote of his own experiences playing against the side renamed Shannon Cricket Club in the 1920s.

According to James, Victoria/Shannon was “the club of the black lower-middle class: the teacher, the law clerk, the worker in the printing office and here and there a clerk in a department store.” It was a formidable combination: Lebrun and Learie Constantine; the brothers Wilton, Edwin and Cyl St Hill; Ben Sealey. All of these played Test cricket except Lebrun Constantine (who would have done had it been possible during his career) and Cyl St Hill. There was also a leg-spinner Cyril Fraser (better known as an athlete). And, according to James, in the 1920s “they played as if they knew that their club represented the great mass of black people in the island”. At a time when ordinary Trinidadians faced enormous racial discrimination from the European elites who ruled what was then a British colony, Shannon stood up for something more. James wrote: “As clearly as if it were written across the sky, their play said: Here, on the cricket field if nowhere else, all men in the island are equal, and we are the best men on the island.” James wrote of the team’s intense competitiveness:

“They had sting without the venom. No Australian team could teach them anything in relentless concentration. They missed few catches, and looked upon one of their number who committed such a crime as a potential Fifth Columnist. Wilton St hill chased a ball from slip to third-man as if he were saving the match and not a possible single. Except for the Constantine family, the patriarch, Old Cons [Lebrun], the always genial Learie and his benign uncle, Pascall, Shannon were not given to smiling on the field, and he was an utter nincompoop who was deceived into believing that the Constantine clan was not of the true Shannon toughness.”

We don’t know Pascall’s job outside of cricket; there were exceptions made for the background of those who played in the Bonanza Cup, and the influence of Lebrun Constantine would have been enough, so Pascall may well not have been “lower-middle class”. At the time, Trinidad cricket reflected its wider society: dominated by a white European minority, riven with racism, prejudice and discrimination. James related how in cricket and life, anyone with a dark skin had severely restricted opportunities. Beyond a Boundary is filled with stories of men fighting against the system and burning with anger: George John, Wilton St Hill, Learie Constantine and a man called Telemaque. And then there was Pascall, whose attitude — at least on the surface — seemed far removed from theirs. The all-pervading racism of Trinidad during his lifetime must have affected him, but we know little of it except that he struggled financially; Constantine wrote: “He was always a poor man and on the whole, though cricket gave him a trip to England and to various parts of the West Indies, it probably took from him as much as it gave.” Pascall’s views, like much of his life, remain a mystery to us. But he seems to have simply loved cricket; Constantine recalled: “He was a great walker, walking many miles to play cricket. On Sunday, to play a friendly match, he would walk from one part of the country to another, ‘over a hill and through a valley,’ as we used to tease him.”

Victor Pascall and Learie Constantine during the 1923 tour of England

When the Intercolonial Tournament returned in 1921–22, played that season on his home pitches of Trinidad, Pascall reassumed his place in the Trinidad team and took five for 45 and three for 16 in a play-off against British Guiana (to decide who would face the champions Barbados). In the final, he was joined by his nephew. Constantine had been on the verge of selection for Trinidad for some time, and earlier in the season had played in some trial matches between scratch teams. One of his opponents in these was his uncle. He recalled in Cricket and I: “I had a great time with Pascall. He troubled all the batsmen except me. But through my familiarity with his bowling Pascall had no terrors for me and I hit him very hard whenever I met him … [He] had never been treated for years as I treated him, but it did not worry him a bit. He would bowl his best at me, and when I hit him he would stand with his arms akimbo, looking at me and admiring the stroke. One day after an over in which I had hit him for some fifteen runs he came up to me and said: ‘Boy, I do not see why if you practise and study your game you shouldn’t become the greatest batsman in the world.'”

Pascall took three for 33 in Barbados’ only innings in the final; rain ruined the match, which was drawn when Barbados had to sail home — in later seasons, the intercolonial matches were extended to be timeless. Trinidad were well on top and Pascall troubled all the batters on the matting of the Queen’s Park Oval; his performance inspired C. L. R. James to write a poem praising Pascall, printed in the Trinidad Sporting Chronicle and mentioned in Beyond a Boundary: each verse named a succession of the world’s best batters coming to Trinidad, listed their virtues and concluded “But — Pascall bowled”. Learie had a quiet time but held one spectacular catch from Pascall’s bowling — the vital wicket of Tim Tarilton — which he believed helped to make his name.

Twelve months later, Pascall attained new heights. In the play-off game against British Guiana, the home team, he took five for 36 and six for 26 on a rain-affected pitch. He opened the batting on the first day in a vain attempt to protect the later batters from the effects of the sticky wicket. In the final, he scored 92 to help Trinidad to 359 but on a flat pitch, the extremely strong Barbados batting line-up scored 673; Pascall had three for 146 from 53 overs. Trinidad collapsed — Pascall scored 0 opening the batting again — and lost by an innings.

Constantine was impressed by that innings but viewed his uncle as a stubborn rather than a brilliant batter:

“As a batsman he was a curiosity. He batted left hand, and no more awkward batsman ever played first-class cricket. But Pa had made his fifty in intercolonial cricket before and in this match made 92. He was the despair of a bowler like George John [in local Trinidad cricket]. John would fix four slips and a gully and bowl his fastest at Pa. It would be nothing strange for him to beat him four times in eight balls, shaving the wickets every time while Pa played forward and back with equal unsuccess. Pa would remain unshaken, and perhaps hit him for two fours in the next over, a clean cut through the slips and a glance to leg. A little later second slip would drop one coming nicely to his stomach. Pascall would continue serenely and end with forty odd.”

Constantine continued: “One thing he had as a batsman — courage. However bad the wicket, however dangerous the bowling, Pascall stood his ground and would not flinch.” He was also a safe fielder in the gully — if not an especially mobile one — whom Constantine said caught better with his left hand than with both together: “Whenever possible he used the left hand alone, especially for hot drives back at him (the hotter the better), and held returns from fieldsmen which he used to grab and scramble into the wickets in a primitive manner peculiar to himself but very effective.”

The West Indies team to England in 1923. Standing: J. A. Small, V. S. Pascall, J. K. Holt, R. H. Mallett (Manager), R. L. Phillips, M. P. Fernandes, C. V. Hunter, G. John. Sitting: G. A. R. Dewhurst, C. R. Browne, G. Challenor, H. B. G. Austin (Captain), R. K. Nunes (Vice captain), P. H. Tarilton. On ground: G. Francis, L. N. Constantine, H. W. Ince (Image: The Cricketer Annual 1923–24)

Whatever his limitations as a batter and fielder, Pascall was one of the leading bowlers in the Caribbean and comfortably the best spinner. Therefore, when the West Indies were invited to tour England during the 1923 season, for the first time since 1906, Pascall was an unquestioned selection, one of five Trinidadians in the team; Constantine was another. The tour was an overall success; a record of six wins and seven losses in first-class was respectable and the team palpably improved as the weeks went on. Critics began to take West Indian cricket seriously, and the 1923 tour was instrumental in the decision to award the team Test status later that decade.

In first-class matches during the tour, Pascall took 54 at 24.28 and Wisden said he “bowled well without rising to any special distinction when opposed to the best batting.” And it is true that his best performances — five for 67 against Cambridge University (albeit quite a strong one), match figures of seven for 70 against Sussex, and innings figures of six for 77 against a weak MCC team — came against lesser sides. But as the number of games mounted, and the team grew fatigued at the unaccustomed amount of cricket they were playing, Pascall remained steady despite his heavy workload. The manager of the team R. H. Mallett, in a review of the tour for the Cricketer Annual 1923–24, suggested that Pascall had been “a most useful change bowler” until even he tired in the final weeks, when he lost his length and bowled too quickly. Constantine recalled a game against Middlesex when the West Indies were captained, none too well, by the vice-captain Karl Nunes, who chronically over-bowled Pascall: “Poor Pa, very successful up to now, bowled thirty-seven overs that day, nearly all in one spell … By this time [he] was merely swinging his arm over.”

Pascall made a good impression on several leading English cricketers. Pascall’s Trinidad Guardian obituary said that Patsy Hendren had called him a “wily old fox”, and Constantine recalled that Pascall’s bowling had sorely troubled the irascible Essex captain Johnny Douglas, a man with a poor opinion of West Indies cricketers: “[Douglas] was never at his best against tricky flighty bowlers, and speaking of Pascall’s bowling he said: ‘Pascall is either a darned fool or a darned clever bowler.'” And Pascall also stood up to Douglas’ fast bowling with a crucial 15 not out when the West Indies beat Essex by three wickets, having been 67 for seven when they needed 93 to win. Because of Pascall’s success on the tour, the West Indies captain Harold Austin asked him to choose a present. According to Constantine, he chose a bicycle as “he was getting on in life” and found walking more of a struggle than in his younger days. It is the only hint that Constantine gives that Pascall’s health may not have been the best.

The Trinidad team that won the Intercolonial Tournament in 1925. Standing: V. S. Pascall, R. A. Boyack, F. G. Grant, A. V. Waddell. Seated: C. Fraser, C. A. Wiles, G. A. R. Dewhurst, J. A. Small, W. H. St Hill. On ground: L. N. Constantine, E. L. St Hill.

Pascall continued to enjoy success with Trinidad, taking ten wickets in the 1923–24 Intercolonial Tournament (won again by Barbados). And he played a key role in their success at home in the 1924–25 competition, taking 12 wickets at 15.91 in the two games. In the final, he was a key part in keeping the dangerous Barbados batting under control, taking one for 49 from 33 overs in the first innings and three for 56 from 34.5 overs in the second innings, while Joe Small took wickets from the other end in both innings. Trinidad’s win by 13 runs meant that they were the champions for the first time since 1910 and ended a sequence of five consecutive victories by Barbados. Pascall was also at the forefront when Trinidad retained the title against British Guiana the following season, taking five for 76 from 55.4 overs in the first innings of the final and scoring a crucial 33 batting up the order as his team successfully chased 183 to win by two wickets.

Later that season, Pascall faced a touring MCC side which played three games in early 1926 against a fully representative West Indies team. He played twice for Trinidad (taking six wickets in the second game) but managed only three wickets at 46.66 in the representative games, a high-scoring series won 1–0 by the MCC. He was similarly unsuccessful in 1926–27 when Barbados regained their title at home. In an extraordinary game, Barbados were bowled out on a rain-affected pitch for 175 (Pascall two for 31), and Trinidad replied with 559. Barbados, 384 runs behind on first innings, compiled 736 for seven declared. Pascall was never collared, but took one for 132 from 89 overs. Barbados eventually won by 125 runs. That game seems to have marked the final turning point for Pascall, who was 40 at the time.

The West Indies team for the first “Test” of the 1926 MCC tour, played at Barbados. Back Row: George Francis, Cecil Nascimento, Victor Pascall, Teddy Hoad, Joe Small, James Parris. Front Row: Wilton St Hill, Tim Tarilton, George Challenor, Harold Austin (captain), Cyril Browne, George John (Image: The Cricketer, 1 May 1926).

By then, the West Indies team had been awarded Test status and planning had begun for the first Test-playing tour of England in 1928. An article in Trinidad’s Sporting Chronicle in 1927, while arguing for Pascall’s selection, conceded that many thought he “is not fit enough to make another trip”. There are also hints — such as in his Trinidad Guardian obituary — that his batting had declined, and that his rivals were more effective with the bat. Nevertheless, he was one of nine Trinidad players asked if he was available for the tour in mid-1927, and he was chosen to play in a series of trial games played in January 1928 aimed at assisting the selectors. Across the three matches, he had impressive figures — ten wickets at 17.50 — but the spinner’s berth went to James Neblett of British Guiana, and these were Pascall’s final first-class matches.

When the Intercolonial Tournament resumed in Trinidad during January and February 1929, the home team won the competition without fielding a specialist spinner. This strategy was repeated for the 1929–30 tournament but Ellis Achong took up the role when an MCC team toured the Caribbean in 1930; he was also selected for the West Indies team in the Trinidad Test. We do not know why Pascall did not play, but he was not too old by contemporary cricketing standards. CricketArchive records his last appearance as a Beaumont Cup match for North Trinidad against South Trinidad in mid-February 1929. Perhaps the explanation for the omission lies in Constantine’s comment that Pascall could not walk as well as he once could; if his health had collapsed it would account for the loss of his place and what happened next.

On 9 July 1930, the Trinidad Guardian reported that Victor Pascall “died in the Colonial Hospital, Port-of-Spain, on Monday night [7 July] after a brief illness.” He was only 43 years old. No explanation was given, and unless someone locates his death certificate, the illness shall remain a mystery. That obituary, and others, gave some details of his success as a cricketer. The Port-of-Spain Gazette said: “By his death Trinidad has lost a fine sportsman one whose name even though he seemed to have passed the zenith of his fame was always on the lips of cricket fans as the absent genius who would have done the trick … Long after the signs which mark his resting place shall have become effaced his brilliant deeds on the cricket field with bat and ball will be spoken of with admiration by succeeding generations of West Indian cricketers.”

Because Pascall’s poor financial situation left him without a grave marker, the Bonanza Cricket Committee launched an appeal which had raised $125.61 by late 1932, enough money to pay for a memorial and leave something for Pascall’s family: his wife and young son (about whom we know nothing). The Trinidad Guardian described the ceremony to unveil the memorial on 19 February 1933, in “the village churchyard at Maraval”. The inscription said: “In Memory of Victor Pascall, Trinidad and West Indies cricketer: Died July 7, 1930. Erected by his admirers”. Around 200 people attended, including several cricketers such as members of the Grant family (including Jackie, who was by then the West Indies cricket captain) and Nelson Betancourt (a former Trinidad and West Indies captain), and proceedings were watched by “Mrs Pascall and her young son [who] stood silently near the memorial during the ceremony”. In a speech, Betancourt said: “As a cricketer it is sufficient for you to witness here today what we have erected to show his merit. As a man, apart from a cricketer he was a thorough gentleman for he knew how to win and how to lose.” And Mrs Pascall said that she “stood with sorrow and with joy” to see the tribute, and expressed her gratitude, and hoped that her son, who was too young to fully understand the honour of the memorial, would come to do so in time. The article in the Trinidad Mirror concluded: “After the ceremony, many people went to the home of Mrs Pascall and to the house where Victor Pascall was born. Several lingered in the back yard lot where the great cricketer played ‘bat and ball’ in his childhood days”.

The ceremony probably took place at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Maraval; no signs of the memorial (nor many pre-war burials, although there were several Pascalls buried) could be found in 2022. In the end, Pascall’s death is as mysterious as most of his life. All we are left with is his cricket. He is forgotten today, nearly a century after he played for the West Indies. Scorecards can only tell us so much, but fortunately we have the memories of Learie Constantine, writing in Cricket and I only three years after Pascall’s death.

Constantine wrote of his uncle’s bowling: “He bowled a perfect length and the ordinary left hander’s leg-break. He had a well-directed fast ball that came with the arm. He bowled a finger spin off-break as well, and on rare occasions a genuine left hander’s googly, the only one I have seen. Yet against a good batsman it was flight more than anything else that got him his wickets. On any wicket that helped him at all he was a dangerous bowler, and few batsmen ever mastered him on the matting wicket at the [Queen’s Park] Oval.” This view was supported by Pascall’s Trinidad Guardian obituary, which stated: “He was able to disguise his pace very cleverly and secured many victims with a fast off-break which caught his victims napping.”

Constantine also favourably noted Pascall’s insistence on always bowling “a good length or between the good length and half volley, on or outside the off-stump”. To prepare for the intercolonial matches, he spent hours bowling at a single stump. When they were in the same team, Constantine recalled: “At slip I used to watch him, always trying something, never just bowling, but — and this is the important thing — always on the basis of a good length. He never gave away a run if he could help it.” He called his uncle “a model for any aspiring young cricketer”. He told Constantine that he took great pleasure bowling on a flat pitch to a good batter, and having to use his brain to dismiss him, than taking cheap wickets on difficult pitches: “There is no fun in that.” The Trinidad Guardian added that “no work in the field was ever too long for him, and he was never more happy than when batsmen tried to hit his bowling out of the ground.”

As a team-mate, his calm and equable temperament helped to offset the more fiery nature of his colleagues in the Trinidad and Victoria/Shannon team. The Trinidad Guardian noted his “genial disposition”, and Constantine said: “He had an immense patience and a golden temper, two of the greatest secrets of his success. When a catch was missed he might say, ‘Tst, tst.’ But at the end of the over if he met the fieldsman in crossing, especially a young player, he would say, ‘Do not mind that, you know, do not mind that. We’ll get him later.'” Constantine wrote: “I played cricket with him from the time I was five, in the yard at home, club cricket, intercolonial cricket in the West Indies and all over England, but I never knew Pa to do an unsportsmanlike action, or utter an unsportsmanlike word. Always pleasant, always persevering, always willing to have another try, always willing to give way to someone else.” Perhaps it is revealing that, in a book on the 1923 tour by the editor of Trinidad’s Sporting Chronicle L. S. Smith, the modest Pascall was the only one of the five Trinidadians who did not offer an opinion on England.

Perhaps then it was not just his cricket which accounted for his reputation. In Beyond a Boundary, James said of Pascall that he was “a most charming person and a great popular favourite with all the classes.” Elsewhere in the book, he said that he was “loved” by cricket followers. Constantine’s final words on his uncle were simple but heartfelt: “The game has had no more faithful servant than he. He is dead now, he died rather suddenly in 1930, but his prowess with the ball and his happy disposition made him one of the best loved of all our cricketers, and it will be many years before his name dies out of West Indies Cricket.” Even in 1984, when Pascall was inaugurated in the Trinidad and Tobago Sports Hall of Fame, and at a time that men like Sonny Ramadhin, Alf Valentine and Lance Gibbs had all played Test cricket, the citation said: “Some old timers still believe he was the greatest spin bowler West Indies ever produced.”