Charlie Griffith was West Indies’ leading bowler during their 1963 tour of England with a staggering 119 wickets – 32 of which came in their 3-1 Test series win. He was named a Wisden Cricketer of the Year the following spring.
Charlie Griffith couldn’t quite carry his brilliance at the Test level after 1963, and finished with 94 wickets from 28 Tests. In 96 first-class games, he took 332 wickets at 21.60.
English cricket received due warning at Bridgetown, Barbados, on New Year’s Eve, 1959, that Charles Christopher Griffith had arrived. At 21 years of age, in his first-class debut, he dismissed MC Cowdrey, MJK Smith and PBH May in two overs.
The following day KF Barrington was added to his formidable list of victims and in the second innings Smith again and ER Dexter tasted a further sample of things to come.
To claim the wickets of three England captains was a feat of which Griffith or any young bowler could feel justly proud. Indeed, that initial burst of success rates still as Griffith’s finest hour, the event of a short career which gives him the greatest thrill.
So Griffith started life in first-class cricket as he intended to continue, by matching his skill and intelligence against the best batsmen in the world – and emerging triumphant. He did so with great regularity in England last summer, finishing the tour as West Indies leading bowler with 119 wickets at an average of 12.83 each. With Hall, he shared an opening attack which ranks now as one of the finest and fastest of all time.
The game has been well served by pace bowling partners – Barnes and Foster, Larwood and Voce, Tyson and Statham, Trueman and Statham of England, Gregory and McDonald, Lindwall and Miller of Australia. Now Griffith and Hall join their fellow West Indians Constantine and Martindale among the best of them.
Charles Griffith hails from Barbados, that sceptred isle which in modern times has produced men like FM Worrell – the finest captain in the world, says Griffith – ED Weekes, CL Walcott, and GS Sobers. He was born at St. Lucy, a small sugar-growing community eighteen miles north of Bridgetown, on December 14, 1938. One of eight children – five brothers and two sisters – he took an immediate interest in cricket when starting his education at St. Clement’s Boy’s School, St. Lucy, at the age of five.
No member of his family played with any proficiency before him and there was no one to give Griffith special coaching. It was as a wicket-keeper-batsman that he first showed promise. The youngest member of his school side, he was also the best and Griffith established in those early days a love for batting which he still holds dear today.
He left school at 15 and spent two years with Crickland Cricket Club before joining Windsor where he came out from behind the stumps to begin his career as a bowler. Off-spin was his stock in trade and it brought him moderate rewards but nothing which Griffith can recall with great enthusiasm.
It was a different story when he joined his third Barbadian club, Lancashire. He went as an orthodox spinner but found the side without a fast bowler. The willing young Griffith volunteered to fill the breach and vividly remembers the day he took seven wickets for one run with his new mode of attack.
Griffith, six foot two inches tall, of massive build and powerful legs, is a bachelor. He does not smoke and takes only the occasional drink, owing his superb fitness to clean living and vigorous exercise. He contributes his success to concentration, dedication and the seriousness with which he plays.
Only as a batsman does Griffith allow himself the luxury of a smile. When thundering along his 20-yard run to the wicket, Griffith is a determined man who regards the occasional bouncer as a legitimate weapon of the pace bowler’s armoury and uses it not to intimidate batsmen but to dismiss them.
Griffith has never tried to develop his style on that of any other great cricketer. Although a boyhood worshipper of Lindwall and Miller, he has always tried to remain an individual, learning from others but never copying.
Griffith exceeded his wildest dreams in England last year, but confesses that he still has much to learn. That is why he is returning in 1964, having signed a two-year contract as professional to Burnley in the Lancashire League. Charles Griffith, then, is visiting again the country he loves so much, the country in which he refuses to believe the sun ever shines for an entire day.
