A toothy Jamaican, Alf Valentine had a meteoric rise to fame, being selected for West Indies’ 1950 tour of England aged just 20, after only two first-class matches, and then, along with the Trinidadian off-spinner Sonny Ramadhin, spinning West Indies to three successive and sensational victories. This was the first hint of the new world order that would dominate the game for much of the next half-century. It also spawned perhaps cricket’s most famous song: Lord Beginner’s calypso about
In partnership with Sonny Ramadhin, West Indies’ Alf Valentine cut a swathe through English batsmen in the Test series between the sides in 1950 and his remarkable career was recalled in his Wisden Almanack obituary in 2005.
Those two little pals o’ mine,
Ramadhin and Valentine.
Valentine’s two previous matches were both selection trials. He made little impact in them – he took two for 190 and was rather flummoxed by the matting pitches – but he impressed the tour captain, John Goddard, and was boosted by a recommendation from the former Glamorgan fast bowler Jack Mercer, who had coached him in Jamaica.
Valentine was a brisk left-armer who gave the ball a prodigious tweak and sometimes made it fizz audibly. On that tour, he bowled nearly 1,200 overs and took 123 wickets, but he started steadily rather than spectacularly, and might not have played in the first Test at Old Trafford had it not been preceded by a match there against Lancashire, in which he took 13 wickets for 67.
After a few years in the Birmingham League, he returned home, and moved to Florida in 1978 with his second wife Jacquelyn (his first wife Gwendolyn, who bore him four daughters, had died). A chance visit to a Sydney care home during that 1960/61 tour had made him want to devote his life to helping underprivileged children, and the Valentines became foster parents to a succession of what are known in Florida as “adjudicated children” – those in need of special care and counselling while their parents are in prison or rehabilitation.
Sometimes they would have as many as 12 at a time, and Valentine lost count of the total number who passed through their care.
Valentine, Alfred Louis, died on May 11, 2004, shortly after his 74th birthday
