Joe Solomon died on December 8, 2023, aged 93. He made 1,326 runs at 34 from 27 Test matches, and was remembered in the 2024 Wisden Almanack.
SOLOMON, JOSEPH STANISLAUS, died on December 8, aged 93. West Indies’ Joe Solomon achieved everlasting fame by hitting the stumps from side-on to complete Test cricket’s first tie, at Brisbane in December 1960, and kickstart a famous series against Australia. There were two deliveries left, and one run needed, when Wes Hall bounded in to left-hander Lindsay Kline, who nudged the ball off his pads into the leg side, and set off for a single. But Solomon, who had run out Alan Davidson in the previous over, kept his head and threw down the stumps to despatch Ian Meckiff, in a moment immortalised by newspaper photographer Ron Lovitt.
Frank Worrell, the West Indian captain, was undoubtedly happy the ball went to Solomon: he was, thought John Woodcock, “one of the few of Worrell’s colleagues who share his calm”. Garry Sobers, for one, thought he would have missed the stumps himself. Even so, the run-out almost didn’t happen. Peter Lashley, who also died in 2023, was fielding nearby, and recalled: “The ball was coming to my right hand, which was my throwing hand, and Joe’s left hand, which was not. But he’d just knocked down the stumps to run out Davidson, and he said ‘Move! Move! Move!’ Had I picked the ball up, there would have been no tied Test…”
The slight, unflashy Solomon had made 65 on the first day at the Gabba – inspired by a glorious century from Sobers, West Indies racked up 359 for seven – but was unhappy to be given out: “I can’t remember hitting the wicket. It was on the third run they gave me out – the wicketkeeper showed the umpire the bail was off. We’d run three already. You’d think after you hit the wicket and take off for the first run they would show you and appeal to the umpire. It was not fair.” Solomon had fewer complaints when he was out hit wicket again in the second Test at Melbourne. “I played back to Richie Benaud, and my cap fell on the stumps. It was just one of those things.” The tourists were proving so popular that sections of the crowd booed Benaud, the home captain, for appealing; at the end of the tour, Melburnians lined the streets and gave the West Indians a tickertape send-off. But the tables had been turned for Solomon in the final Test – he was run out twice, and Benaud’s side crept home by two wickets to clinch a series which revitalised Test cricket, in Australia at least.
Solomon hailed from the vast Port Mourant sugar plantation in British Guiana (now Guyana), as did his frequent teammates Rohan Kanhai and Basil Butcher. They honed their fielding skills in an unusual way: “There was a mango tree near where we used to live, just hanging over the fence,” he told Brydon Coverdale for ESPNcricinfo in 2016. “The mangoes used to be hanging over, so I just pelted them. We all used to pelt down the mangoes.”
When he graduated to first-class cricket, Solomon made a start that is still unique, scoring centuries in each of his first three innings. All three came at the Bourda Oval in Georgetown, the first two in October 1956 against Jamaica and Barbados, the third against the Pakistan tourists early in 1958. “His shots, by West Indies standards, are extremely limited,” said Guyana’s captain Clyde Walcott of the debut hundred, “but his innings was a fine example of concentration and what I can only describe as guts.” This eye-catching start alerted the selectors, and Solomon toured the subcontinent later that year. Again he shot out of the blocks: included for the Second Test against India at Kanpur, he made 45 and 86, and rounded off the series with 100 not out at Delhi, to finish with 351 runs at 117. It helped, he felt, that “I could bat spin fairly well.”
That remained his only Test century, though he did reach 96 against India in Barbados early in 1962: “I thought I’d hit a six but I was caught at backward square leg.” This was unusual aggression, but Worrell was an admirer, once joking: “When Joe goes out to bat, I can have a nap.” Solomon toured England in 1963, where among other rescue acts he contributed a three-hour 56 in the exciting Lord’s encounter. He missed only one of Worrell’s 15 Tests in charge, but had just four more caps once Sobers took over. Back in England in 1966, Solomon failed to crack the Test side, though he did make a century against Somerset. He signed off in February 1969 with 169 in his last match, for Guyana against Barbados in the Shell Shield. It was his 12th first-class century, and the seventh at Bourda, where he averaged 75.
Solomon took up coaching, succeeded Walcott in a hands-on role with the Sugar Producers’ Association in Guyana, and later served as a Test selector. He moved to New York in 1984, and lived out his remaining years there. Ian McDonald, a Guyanese businessman and writer who was a long-time friend, summed up: “Solomon! A good name for him – a strong, wise, responsible batsman who time and again rescued Guyana and the West Indies when danger or disaster threatened.”
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