posted by John Winn
In a posting made at the end of last month, 'naming names', I referred to the career of West Indian test player, Andy Ganteaume, who toured this country in 1957 when aged 36 and rather past his peak as an opening batsmen. AGG had been capped almost ten years before and despite scoring a century in his first test innings he was never picked again. The official version explaining why he was dropped for the next test is described by his fellow Trinidadian and opening partner in inter-island cricket, Jeffrey Stollmeyer. In his autobiography 'Everything Under The Sun' Stollmeyer recalls the test played against England in Port of Spain a little over sixty five years ago when an injury hit England party were forced to press reserve wicketkeeper S C (Billy) Griffith, later secretary and president of MCC, into service as an opening batsman. Griffith responded by scoring his maiden century in first class cricket, an innings described as 'a stupendous effort' by Wisden and the fact that it took only six minutes short of six hours seems only to add to Wisden's delighted response to Griffith's efforts.
Wisden's report of the drawn match is by Norman Preston, later to be its editor, and whilst he gives credit to Ganteaume, who was deputising for the injured Stollmeyer, and whose 'slow scoring' innings took four and a half hours, Preston describes how a note was sent out to Ganteaume from skipper Gerry Gomez, urging them to 'score more quickly'. Wisden does not mention, however that the note applied to both batsmen, a point AGG makes in his defence in his autobiography 'My Story The Other Side of The Coin. Ganteaume sees himself as the victim of 'strange and irrational (some would say iniquitous) behaviour of an Establishment which ran the show for and on behalf of their own'.... As a black cricketer, with some Indian blood, from a largely working class district of the Trinidad capital Ganteaume emerges as being of the wrong colour, class and status and with the wrong attitude.
Stollmeyer by contrast was of 'the plantation class' of German and English stock .His great grandfather had arrived in Trinidad in 1846 and established himself as a cocoa planter. JBS played his first test aged only aged 18 and captained the West Indies for the first time when they toured Australia in 50-51 and retained it for the next three series, all played at home including the controversial visit by MCC in 53-4. Replaced by Goddard for the tour of England in 1957 he retired from first class cricket but went on to have a distinguished career as an administrator and selector and became a senator in the Trinidad Parliament. His life ended tragically when he died, aged 68, as the result of wounds sustained when his house in Florida was broken into in 1989. When Gerry Alexander stood down as captain after losing to Peter May's side in 1959-60, Stollmeyer, by now a member of the West Indian board, recognised that the time had come for change and supported the appointment of Frank Worrell, a decision which will no doubt leave Alexander as the last white man to captain the West Indies.
Having read Stollmeyer's autobiography I was left feeling rather flat. Here was a man who had played alongside, captained, selected, and administered some of the most exciting cricketers who ever played the gam, cricketers like the three Ws, Gary Sobers, Ramadin and Valentine and yet the book never comes alive and it became a question of getting through it rather than enjoying it. Chapter 18 'From Agriculture to Business 'for example, proved as exciting as it sounds.
Andy Ganteaume is the oldest living West Indian test player, he was 92 in January, and I wonder if he reflects on the tour of England in 1957 that he may have owed his selection to his case being supported by Stollmeyer in the 'Sunday Guardian', a Trinidad newspaper.A nice irony if so. In any event AGG was one of three who made the trip whose names were not amongst those nominated in a group of forty invited to trials and yet were put forward by Stollmeyer. Ganteaume devotes a chapter to the tour where despite the disappointing form of his fellow openers he was not given the chance to double his number of caps. Perhaps he takes comfort that in the tests, where his colleagues were frequently dismissed for low scores, his test average of 112 was unlikely to have survived the pace of Trueman and Loader let alone the spin of Laker and Lock.
