Pratham Chhabria | 1:26pm BST 26 May 2025
Pratham: Welcome to another episode of Cow Corner Cricket Cast. The podcast that’s
interested in cricket insights and history across the spectrum and all the different entities that
are involved in this sport that we all so cherish.
Pratham: I’m joined today again with a gentleman that should need no introduction.
Pratham: He’s been a special cricketer. And a world record holder, no less!
Pratham: That being Sir Lance Gibbs.
Pratham: Mr. Gibbs, it’s a pleasure connecting with you once again.
Lance Gibbs: Thank you very much.
Pratham: I remember the last time we discussed a lot of interesting things.
Pratham: I heard a lot of revelations.
Pratham: Even got some fitness advice inadvertently from you!
Lance Gibbs: Hahahaha!
Pratham: I don’t think I’ve reached the point where I can run 7 miles a day yet – but, it’s been
helpful.
Pratham: Now when we last spoke, we were discussing different aspects pertaining to your
early life and path to the Test side as well as some general insights on how you bowled.
Pratham: And now I’d like to be looking at something a bit different – what actually happened
during your international career as well as after retirement.
Pratham: So with that said, we’ll get started.
Pratham: So like we mentioned last time, your first class career started in 1953 bowling to the
likes of Dennis Compton & Len Hutton when they were touring as part of the English party.
Pratham: But this time around, I wanted to sort of focus a little bit more on your Test career and
as part of that I wanted to understand how you were selected for your very first Test.
Pratham: And in that vein, one of my questions was on figuring out what sparked it.
Pratham: At the time of your first call up to the Test side in early 1958, since that first game, you only played 4 more first class games. And you took 11 wickets during that period, which is pretty reasonable.
Pratham: But it’s not a whole lot of games or wickets for somebody to get selected to the Test
side.
Pratham: When I was looking into it, it seemed like the performance the selectors largely looked
at when picking you was this game you had played in the Quadrangular Tournament in 1956.
Pratham: It was a final between Barbados and…
Lance Gibbs: Guiana, yeah.
Pratham: Yeah.
Pratham: You took 4 for 68 and that forced Barbados to follow on after Guyana piled on 581
runs in the 1st innings.
Pratham: What are your memories of that match? Did you feel like it was a significant turning
point in your career?
Lance Gibbs: It certainly was. To get 4 or 5 wickets at Bourda, one of the hallmarks, on one of
the great (batting) wickets I played on…it’s not easy.
Lance Gibbs: So having achieved that, you know, I think it was a major success. It was like
bowling down Denis Compton.
Pratham: It certainly seemed from the scorecard at least to be a pretty flat pitch for that final.
Pratham: (On the back of your performance) Guiana ended up bowling them out for 211 and
then force them to follow on…
Lance Gibbs: Right.
Pratham: And I’m not sure if rain saved them because they were then 68/4…
Lance Gibbs: Rain, yes.
Lance Gibbs: You got a fair amount of rain in any case there and it was towards the end of the
season. What we call a “red season”.
Lance Gibbs: Things went particularly well for us. You got a feeling about your name then being
picked when compared with others given this.
Pratham: Well, coming back to that question, right. You’ve played about 5 FC games at this
point and the selectors were taking a punt on you.
Pratham: Did you feel that you were ready to make the step up to the Test level?
Lance Gibbs: Denis Compton was the main man in batting in England and right through the
Caribbean. And having bowled him out was a major success.
Pratham: So you felt once you got somebody of his caliber…
Lance Gibbs: I could bowl out anyone on another team.
Pratham: Fair enough.
Pratham: With all of that said, let’s go to your first Test. February 5th, 1958. You make your
debut against Pakistan at the Queen’s Park Oval in Trinidad and you have a pretty good start!
Pratham: 4 for 80 in the match, and in the 2nd innings in particular you polished off many of the
members of the Pakistani tail to put an end to the match (West Indies won by 120 runs).
Pratham: How did you feel you bowled in that game? Did you feel you bowled at 100% as well
as you could?
Lance Gibbs: Well, you feel good as you get wickets and that was no exception.
Lance Gibbs: Everton Weekes was a good friend of mine and he was at first slip. And he took
two good catches, one of my bowling.
Lance Gibbs: Having deceived the batsman ready to play spin with straight balls…to get 4
wickets there was an exceptional success.
Lance Gibbs: It was an important game for me as a bowler. Remember, in that team, you had
genuine quick bowlers like Jaswick Taylor. You know, Wes Hall waiting in the wings.
Lance Gibbs: So to pick up wickets in that innings…you’re cementing yourself in the team to a
certain extent.
Pratham: Right.
Pratham: Now that you mention looking to cement yourself in the team, let’s talk about the man
perhaps most responsible in allowing one to cement themselves in a side, your captain…
Lance Gibbs: Gerry Alexander, yes.
Pratham: He had a mixed reputation in certain circles in the sense that a lot of people admired
his tenacity but he was also known to be a strict disciplinarian on the ground.
Pratham: How did you experience him as a new player coming into the side? What was your
first impression of him?
Lance Gibbs: He was a good captain. He had no favorites, you know.
Lance Gibbs: He was a man who wasn’t afraid to mix things up so we could perform particularly
well. And if you were performing well, you always felt you got a chance.
Pratham: Fair enough. As a captain, how would he compare to say somebody like Sir Frank
Worrell who would go on to captain you quite a bit? As a wicketkeeper, how would he compare
to Derrick Murray who kept later in your career?
Lance Gibbs: How would he…
Pratham: Compare? Like were there different kinds of personalities? Different styles of
leadership?
Lance Gibbs: There certainly was. Frank Worrell was an established cricketer of great repute.
Gerry Alexander was still feeling his way into the team. You had to be very careful about what
you were saying when he was standing up at the stumps, haha!
Pratham: And then as a wicketkeeper, did you find him top notch?
Lance Gibbs: He wasn’t…I think Derrick (Murray) was a better wicketkeeper. Because he had
more all-round experience.
Lance Gibbs: (On Alexander) He seemed raw. He was very good at keeping in Jamaica on that
hard wicket. And that’s it.
Lance Gibbs: (Continuing on Alexander) He was a great man. He knew things inside out.
Pratham: It’s interesting how a lot of wicket keepers in Caribbean history especially during
roughly the time phase when you played happened to become captains at some point or the
other. There was a period where even Rohan Kanhai was tried out as a wicket keeper in the 57
series (to England) so just a little bit before your debut. But then he would later become your
captain!
Lance Gibbs: Mmhhmm.
Pratham: Now after your performance on debut, you played in the 3rd Test of that series vs
Pakistan. And I want to back up a little bit to the 1st Test of that series which you didn’t play in,
because that series overall was very famous, starting from that Test.
Pratham: Hanif Mohammad made a ton to help Pakistan draw the match following on. And it
was a memorable moment in Pakistani cricket. This was their first batting superstar really and
he saved them.
Lance Gibbs: He got a triple century, right?
Pratham: Yes, 337.
Lance Gibbs: He batted extremely well. And I was able to get into the next Test from that
performance.
Pratham: They needed a little bit more firepower, it seems…
Lance Gibbs: Haha!
Pratham: So we turn back to the 3rd Test. And I mean, one triple century is usually as much as
you’re going to get in a series.
Pratham: But then Garry in the 3rd Test…Sobers then went and broke the world record
Lance Gibbs: 365. It was in Jamaica, wasn’t it?
Pratham: I believe so, yes. And it was a big moment…
Lance Gibbs: Oh yes, a big moment in cricket!
Pratham: And I have some footage of that moment. I can see from the footage that there was
a…you know, what we’d call a “crowd invasion” these days. My guess is it was a little bit more
common back then in the Caribbean.
Pratham: Having had the front row seat essentially to that game because you were in the side,
what did you remember the atmosphere as being like in that game?
Lance Gibbs: It was a great performance. I’ve never seen anything like that before.
Pratham: Was it the most electrifying moment that you had witnessed in a match?
Lance Gibbs: It certainly is.
Pratham: Now on another note, in that series, there was another gentleman who was playing on
your side who happened to be an off spinner.
Pratham: He was a batting all rounder but he bowled a fair amount of off breaks. And that was
Collie Smith, who was also Garry Sobers’s close friend.
Pratham: What were your impressions of Collie?
Lance Gibbs: He was not a big spinner of the ball. He couldn’t put everything into it (the
off-break) all the time.
Pratham: Was he a little bit quicker through the air?
Lance Gibbs: He surely was.
Lance Gibbs: You know, when he was left out of the team, I came in his place and then he just
went away.
Pratham: And then there was the accident…
Lance Gibbs: Exactly. And the accident was with Garry as well. They were playing league
cricket in England.
Pratham: I’ve always been curious about this. When you select two spinners of the same type in
a side, it’s usually not the customary thing to do.
Lance Gibbs: Well, they (referring to Garry & Collie) were both batsmen as well. So it’s not a
question of dropping a spinner to play a spinner. I mean, the brothers made themselves in the
side and they had to write their own way.
Pratham: And Collie Smith did take wickets in that series. In one of the games, he took a 4-fer…
Lance Gibbs: He did, he did.
Pratham: So he definitely had a degree of form behind him.
Pratham: Did you feel that when you bowled in tandem, you two complimented each other?
Because like you mentioned you’re a big spinner of the ball, he was not so much of a big
spinner. He bowled a little bit quicker than you. Did you feel that kind of contrast was beneficial?
Lance Gibbs: Depends on how you vary your bowling and what you brought in, you know? You
can tell somebody is doing something different. And if you try to do something different to him,
you could get away with it here or there.
Pratham: Right.
Pratham: You ended up taking 17 wickets in that series against Pakistan. And it was at a pretty
good average, 23 runs per wicket.
Pratham: And you also took your 1st 5 wicket haul in that series. It was the 4th Test in
Georgetown. So you went to your 1st Test essentially that you played on your home ground and
ended up picking a 5-fer, which is quite a great achievement!
Pratham: In the series, I did notice that 3 of those dismissals came against their skipper Abdul
Hafiz Kardar who was on the tour and batted I think at number 7, number 8. Bowled a bit as
well.
Lance Gibbs: Yeah, yeah.
Pratham: What did you think about him and what do you think made him susceptible to being
dismissed by you in that fashion (gesturing to images of bowled & caught at slip dismissals –
Kardar in the series was bowled out once by Gibbs and caught in close the other times by Clyde
Walcott standing at slip & Collie Smith).
Lance Gibbs: You know, if I’m bowling at an individual and I’ve gotten them out once…it
registers. Because you’ve gotten him out in this way – it’s a fault he has had somewhere along
the line that you have picked it up. And if you’ve picked it up you don’t let go.
Lance Gibbs: Abdul Kardar…he had that little self-opinionated expression to him there.
Lance Gibbs: He had played cricket in England. And he was more or less, covering the English
part of it. And it was difficult to get closer to him.
Pratham: So he was a little bit aloof?
Lance Gibbs: Yes, yes.
Pratham: And I have some of the other names that were in the Pakistan tour I’d like to share
with you (showing image of the labelled Pakistani tourists to the Caribbean in 1957-58).
Pratham: So I was curious about what you made of the side as a whole but also some of these
players and who you rated as their best bowler and batsman.
Lance Gibbs: Fazal Mahmood! He was a great bowler. He got a lot of his fame from England.
The conditions there would suit him more than probably in the Caribbean.
Pratham: Yup, he ended up averaging 38 in that particular series. One of the things I was
always curious about in that series was just the conditions in terms of the nature of the wickets.
Pratham: Because it seemed for most of the Tests…there were some Tests where rain came
and freshened up the pitch. But it seemed as if most of the pitches were played on fairly flat
surfaces.
Lance Gibbs: Yeah.
Pratham: So you would rate Fazal as their best bowler and then their best batsman as Hanif or
someone else?
Lance Gibbs: Hanif.
Pratham: Okay.
Pratham: I know there was a gentleman by the name of Saeed Ahmed who played as well…
Lance Gibbs: Saeed Ahmed…he went on to greater things.
Pratham: So that’s that Pakistani tour on the field.
Pratham: And after the day’s play, we hear stories from a lot of different environments about
how, you know, back then there was a lot more socialization between two teams. You know,
some people…
Lance Gibbs: Would have a drink. Yeah.
Pratham: Were there any members of that Pakistani touring side that you ended up socializing
with or becoming friends after that series?
Lance Gibbs: You’d have a drink and mix with them but you don’t become friends as we know
friends for years.
Pratham: I see.
To be continued ………….
