The fastest bowler of his day, Hall was the shimmering spearhead of the first truly great West Indies team. But that’s not the half of it
By Phil Walker for Wisden Cricket Monthly
This is a story about a man, and men, and what it means to embody something bigger than yourself. It’s about the ephemeral nature of things, and how we memorialise those precious fragments of legend, lest we lose them for good. It’s about a beautiful idea, and the islands around which that beautiful idea once coalesced. And it’s about acceptance: about coming to terms with the fact that something that once mattered very much will never matter again like it used to.
The man is 86 now, using a wheelchair yet sturdily unslouched, hoisted up by the cane that he grips in the palm of his bowling hand so his elbow can rest on the back of his seat. Between the open collars of his orange-red shirt and the lapels of his suit nestles a thin silvery-gold chain and crucifix, gifted to him by his mother to calm his nerves before a big school match. Aside from when it’s been cleaned he’s worn it every day since, save for that time in Adelaide when it became unhooked and was found by a journalist from the Daily Express. “You see fellas now,” he said recently, “six chains around their neck. They have entered the oasis of prosperity, that’s why they got six chains. I have this to remind me, not of where I have come from, but where I am going. And to remind me, as my mother told me, to make sure that God is always at the centre of my endeavours.”
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