This two is for Rex (18 March 1999)

18 March 1999

This two is for Rex

Earl Best

On the afternoon of Saturday, March 13, Brian Lara came to the wicket with his West Indies team struggling at five runs for two wickets in the Second Test versus Australia at Sabina Park in Jamaica.

For Lara, under particular pressure after the 5-0 whitewash in South Africa and the massive defeat in Port of Spain, it was a not unfamiliar situation. His reaction, however, was rare indeed.

Who can say why? But there might be more than coincidence in the following chronology ...

On the afternoon of Monday, March 8, the Brian Lara-led West Indies lost the First Test match to Australia by the huge margin of 312 runs. In the second innings of that match, the sixth successive Test in which the regional team was defeated under its new captain, the West Indies were dismissed for 51, their lowest ever score in a Test innings.

On the morning of Tuesday, March 9, the Great Umpire called "time" on Rex Dewhurst.

On the morning of Friday, March 12, after a funeral service at Clarke and Battoo's on Tragarete Road, Dewhurst, who was one of Lara's first coaches at the Harvard Coaching Clinic, went beyond the boundary of no return.

Carlie Dore, another of the Harvard people who had such an effect on the Prince of Port of Spain's early cricketing life, was among the mourners. So was Lenny Kirton, the prime mover behind the Harvard Clinic. And so was Randolph Bally with whom Dewhurst coached at Queen's Royal College during the last decade.

There too were many of the men whose lives had been touched by Rex either at Harvard or at QRC while we were but boys. Roger Matthew was there as were Dwight Day, Holly Carrington, Ruthven Thompson, Vernon "Sam" Sadaphal, Victor Gamaldo, Rolph Clarke, Brian Bain, Kenley Rudder.

Francis Warner, currently in charge of the QRC boys who operated the new electronic scoreboard for the first time in a Test match during the First Test debacle, was there as were a dozen of the young players in school uniform, the former principal, Mr Winston Douglas, and his successor, William J Carter.

But none of us spoke up. None of us said what Rex had done for us. And before we knew it, Rex was being wheeled out. Over. Done. Next.

Rex. The dictionary says it means "a king". And "king" translated means "maker of princes".

In Jamaica to prepare for the most important Test of his life, the Prince of Port of Spain was not physically present at the simple ceremony on Friday morning.

But his spirit was there, the old spirit, the Harvard spirit, the Fatima spirit, the Sydney spirit, the pre-375 spirit, the spirit that Rex had helped to shape.

Rex had always been the quintessential amateur. Whether at Harvard or at Queen's Royal College, he was prepared to labour without tangible reward, a labour of love.

So he was thrilled to bits with the sheer technical mastery of 277 at Sydney. He was delighted with the report of Rohan Kanhai's admonition to his 24-year-old protege at the end of the masterful knock.

"Remember, young man, your next innings begins at zero."

It is what he would himself have said, had he been there. It is why he was worried about the the lionisation, the national awards, the excess after the 375.

It is why a little piece of him died in London last November. He had survived into the post-Packer age of rampant professionalism but he really belonged in the period that preceded it.

Sportsmanship. Fairplay. Giving it your best shot no what the circumstances. Those were his values, the things that he held dearest.

Much more than a motto, "all strive but the prize is not for all" was for him a way of life.

Whether it was in the halycon days of the 1950s and 1960s, when with Kirton and Dore and Hugo Day, he was knocking on open doors or in the hazardous times of the 1990s when, with Bally, he had to break down walls to reach and teach, he never compromised on the principles. He knew that sport was the real education and that the only teaching with a real chance of making a difference was taking place within the boundary.

Which brought the Prince right back to the present and the business at hand.

And so his mind turned to the match on the morrow. Publicly scolded for the South Africa disaster and put on a two-match probation by the West Indies Cricket Board, the 29-year-old knew that his career was on the line. The multiple criteria by which he was supposed to be judged did not include winning the Tests. But he could have no illusions about what would be the effect of the huge defeat in the First Test. Whatever the margin, he knew, a second loss would mean that some head would have to roll. Not the president's, not the manager's, not the coach's but his!

And defeat was certain if he failed to deliver not so much as captain but as batting leader. And then, so soon after Rex's, would come for him a funeral of a different sort.

And his mind was still thus occupied when suddenly it was Saturday afternoon and within the boundary, Lincoln Roberts was caught off the glove and it was five for two.

Time to take the crease, to go out to the middle.

To play one for Rex ...

Source :: The Trinidad Express (https://www.trinidad.net/express/)