West Indies’ tour of England in 1950 proved to be a breakthrough. After winning the series 3-1, four of their players were named as Wisden Cricketers of the Year, including the legendary Everton Weekes.
Wisden’s prediction turned out to be on the money; Weekes continued to be a mainstay of the West Indies side until 1958. He scored 4,455 runs at 58.61 with 15 centuries.
Perhaps no batsman since Bradman has made such an impression on his first English tour as a ruthless compiler of big scores as did Everton De Courcy Weekes of the West Indies in the 1950 season. There were many sceptical of his ability to reproduce on English county grounds the form by which he made so many high scores at home and broke records in India and in Lancashire League cricket.
Weekes, in a predominantly wet summer, soon proved them wrong by revealing a propensity for reaching his hundred and settling down for another hundred by methods heartbreakingly safe from the bowlers’ point of view yet aggressive enough to carry his score along deceptively fast and afford the richest entertainment to the spectators.
By mid-July he had reached three figures five times, and not once did he stop short of a double-century. In detail his scores were 232 v Surrey, 304 not out v Cambridge University, 279 v Nottinghamshire, 246 not out v Hampshire, and 200 not out v Leicestershire. It came almost as a shock to his admirers when he was out at the modest total of 129 in the Nottingham Test.
He vindicated himself with a dominating innings of 141, driving magnificently, and this proved the first of five consecutive Test centuries, a world record, for Weekes reached three figures in his first four Test innings in India during the following winter. He equalled yet another Headley feat by becoming the second West Indies batsman to make two centuries in a Test, 162 and 101 at Calcutta in the third game, and his 162 on a grassy pitch in the first innings he considers the best of his career. In the five Tests in India he scored 779 runs at an average of 111.28.
In England, his Test scores were less prolific, and he finished below Worrell and Rae in the averages, with 56.33 for 338 runs. Yet he figured in another Test record, for his fourth-wicket partnership of 283 with Worrell at Nottingham was the biggest stand made for West Indies in any Test. Weekes shared in two other fabulous stands with Worrell, 350 for the third wicket at Fenner’s against Cambridge University, and an unbroken third-wicket partnership of 340 against Leicestershire.
The Cambridge stand set up a West Indies record for any wicket in England, and Weekes’s 304 not out was the highest by a West Indies player in this country. At Leicester, Weekes reached his century in 65 minutes, the fastest of the season. If anything is certain in cricket, it is that this likeable player, so dominating at the crease and so quiet off the field, will continue to break batting records.
