RALPH MACGREGOR
OH GOD, NELLO, IF YOU SEE THAT BOY BAT
By David Brewster
Express Section 2
November 24, 2001
Page 3
The name Ralph MacGregor means nothing to today's cricket fans. Nobody under 70 probably remembers the name.
Five days ago, Bryan Davis, the 61-year-old former West Indies opening bat, said that he never heard of him.
But fate probably prevented MacGregor a QRC old boy, from blossoming into an all-time great West Indian all-rounder.
His mysterious death which occurred 1934 was peculiarly connected with cricket.
MacGregor was 10 when he was spotted by CLR James, one of the truly remarkable cricket writers of the century, who described him as "very slender, even notably thin ... who played forward and played back with a command and confidence that astonished me."
"MacGregor used to bowl a leg break. His hand used to turn over and I used to watch the ball spin. MacGregor batted at times and always he impressed me. Somehow I saw that he had the foundations of batting in him."
CLR James continues: "I go to England in 1932 and I am staying at Constantine's house. Every year Constantine goes to Trinidad. In 1932 he went to Trinidad and came back in 1933 for the English season. I said: How was it Learie? A lot of cricket? He said. "Plenty". I asked: "Did you see a young fellow I used to know - MacGregor? He said: "Oh God, Nello ... if you see that boy bat!
Now you must understand that Constantine had played cricket in England, he had played in India, he had been to Australia - he was an international cricketer, a man of immense experience. So he and I talked - you can understand what this meant to me. He said: Nello - if you see that boy bat.
"I questioned Learie carefully and exhaustively. By exhaustively I mean going into questions of strokes, forward play, back play, timing, different strokes to a particular ball."
MacGregor, according to James, was not in any way a unique player.
"He had no particular strokes. He just batted and did everything as it ought to be done. Like all great batsmen, he was strictly orthodox. If there was one thing that Constantine seemed to emphasise it was his habit of getting singles off the back-stroke, the back defensive stroke and the forward defensive stroke. His secret with the forward defensive stroke was to play it very quietly so that cover point had a long way to get to it and he could practically walk to the pitch.
"On the on-side his defensive backstroke was twisted slightly and it would constantly beat the man at short-leg, although he had to play this defence a little harder than the other one, apart from that e was a completely orthodox, straightforward batsman."
MacGregor never made a first class century. He never played Test cricket.
The highlight of his brief career was a "magnificent 72 not out" against Barbados in intercolonial cricket in 1934 for Trinidad at Queen's park Oval. Trinidad won by 288 runs. Among MacGregor's teammates were Clifford Roach, E A C Hunt, Cyril Merry, G C Grant (skipper), M G Grell, Puss Achong, B J Sealy, D Eligon and R S Grant.
The few survivors who saw the knock still recall how elegant a 19-year-old MacGregor looked against the fiery A E Martindale, who bagged four for 91 in the first innings and five for 106 in the second.
There are two versions of MacGregor's passing.
CLR wrote that MacGregor was not physically strong.
"He was batting one day and it was raining. He had been batting for some time, he was perspiring strongly and some said: "Let us stop," others said: "Let us go on."
MacGregor said to go on. So from perspiring strongly he got soaking wet while batting, and when he went home he went to bed and never got out again.
He was found dead next morning.
But octogenarians like Frederick De Vero and Elias Constantine, who played in the 1934 match, talked about the sustained duel between the stylish MacGregor and Martindale.
"Martindale went flat out and Ralph got some real hot ones to his chest and stomach. He was in pain all the time. We believe that he died as a result of the Martindale onslaught," said De Vero.
But both CLR James and Constantine went to their graves unable to solve the MacGregor mystery.
CLR said he always wondered what it was he saw in the boy MacGregor when he was ten years old and battling to master his leg-break.
"What it was that I saw that kept me saying that he bowled the leg break well, but that boy was really a batsman.
"That is one of those cricket problems that I have never been able to answer myself," he said.