By Winston McGowan
The most satisfying accomplishment of cricketers all over the world arguably is the scoring of their first Test century. Many of them never score another Test hundred. Among this sizeable and growing group of players who have scored only a single Test century in their career are 32 West Indians, including six Guyanese.
These six players in alphabetical order are Faoud Bacchus, Leonard Baichan, Robert Christiani, Clayton Lambert, Bruce Pairaudeau and Joe Solomon. The previous three instalments of this article focused on Christiani, Pairaudeau and Solomon. This fourth instalment will focus on Baichan.
Leonard Baichan is one of the most successful opening batsmen in the history of Guyanese cricket, eclipsed arguably only by Roy Fredericks, Leslie Wight and Clayton Lambert. Baichan, a left-hander, was born in Berbice in May 1946 at a time when West Indies Test cricket was still suffering from the interruption caused by the Second World War. He was a solid reliable batsman whose greatest assets were probably his good defence and immense powers of concentration. He was a cautious, cool-headed resolute player who was a successful accumulator of runs, often playing the role of sheet anchor, maintaining one end while the other more aggressive batsmen pushed the score along at the other end. His obvious deficiencies were that he was very limited in stroke play and tended to be unsettled by genuinely fast bowling.
Baichan made his first-class debut for Guyana in the 1969 regional Shell Shield tournament. In the absence of the country’s established openers, Roy Fredericks and Stephen Camacho who were representing the West Indies in Australia, Baichan played two games at Bourda against Barbados and Trinidad. He performed satisfactorily, scoring 162 runs in four innings with two fifties (64 and 72) and an average of 40.50.
Nevertheless, owing to the presence of Fredericks and Camacho, he was unable to gain selection for Guyana in the following two tournaments. However, he returned to the national team in 1972 and became a permanent member in 1974. His performance in these years improved significantly as reflected in his batting average -69.50 in 1972, 83.50 in 1973 and 46.00 in 1974. In nine inter-territorial matches in these three competitions Baichan in 14 innings scored 721 runs with three centuries, two fifties and an impressive average of 60.91.
His success enabled him to gain selection on the West Indies President’s XI against visiting teams from New Zealand in 1972 and England in 1974. Baichan shone in these matches, making 96 in his only innings against the New Zealanders and 49 and 139 not out against the Englishmen, the top score in both innings. In short, by 1974 he was clearly one of the best opening batsmen in the Caribbean.
Not surprisingly, his consistent productivity enabled him to gain selection on the West Indies team which toured India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan at the end of the year and in the early months of 1975. It was anticipated that Baichan might be asked to open the batting in the Tests with the experienced Roy Fredericks in preference to the young Barbadian, Gordon Greenidge, whom he had eclipsed in the recent Shell Shield tournament as well as in the games against the M.C.C tourists, for their countries and the West Indies President’s XI.
This expectation seemed likely to be fulfilled when Baichan scored centuries in his first two innings in India. Unfortunately, however, he was then injured in a car accident which caused him to be unavailable for selection for several matches, including the initial Tests of what was a five-match series. In these circumstances Greenidge was chosen as Fredericks’ opening partner for the first Test, his Test debut, and seized the opportunity to play two impressive innings of 93 and 107, a major contribution to his team’s massive victory by 267 runs.
Greenidge remained the preferred partner for Fredericks for the remaining four Tests of the rubber, although his scores in these matches were mostly disappointing- 31, 20 and 3, 14 and 17,and 32 and 54. Baichan, however, got an opportunity to be chosen in the Test team in Pakistan when Greenidge suffered a back injury.
This short two-Test rubber in Pakistan was viewed with considerable importance by the West Indies. The Caribbean team hoped to avenge the series loss which it had suffered there in their last clash with Pakistan on their only previous visit there in 1959, sixteen years before, when Franz Alexander’s team was defeated by two games to one by Fazal Mahmood’s side.
It was in the first Test at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore in February 1995 that Baichan, then 28-years-old, made his Test debut. Pakistan, led by Intikhab Alam, batted first and was dismissed for only 199 due mainly to penetrative pace bowling by Andy Roberts and Keith Boyce who took five for 66 and three for 55 respectively.
In reply the West Indies made 214, a lead of only 15 runs, faltering against the pace of the Pakistani opening bowler, Safraz Nawaz, who took six for 89. Baichan and Fredericks shared an opening stand of 66, their team’s largest partnership. Baichan made 20 in 115 minutes and though one reporter described his innings as “scrappy”, it was his team’s third best score after a brilliant knock of 92 not out by his fellow Berbician, Alvin Kallicharran, who ran out of partners, and 44 by Fredericks.
Pakistan did much better in their second innings, scoring 373 for the loss of seven wickets before declaring late on the fourth day and penultimate day of the match. The visitors were thus given a formidable victory target of 359 runs. Apart from the size of the target, they were concerned about the standard and fairness of the umpiring for the two umpires, Amanullah Khan and Shakoor Rana, who were both officiating in their first Test, had already given eight leg-before-wicket (lbw) decisions in the game, including five against them in their first innings.
At the close of the day, the West Indies, after batting for 30 minutes were 15 for 0, with Fredericks 10 and Baichan four.They suffered a setback early the next day when with the score at 30, Fredericks was adjudged lbw to Safraz Nawaz for 14. Baichan was joined by Kallicharran and the pair took the team safely to lunch, when the score was 89 for one. Most of the 69 runs of their-second wicket partnership were scored by the more aggressive Kallicharran who at the interval was 44 not out, including one six and five fours, made in 90 minutes.
Any hope which the West Indies had of winning the game was lost immediately after lunch when, with the score still at 89, the wrist spinner, Intikhab Alam, had Kallicharran caught at the wicket for 44 and Vivian Richards lbw for a duck. On the other hand, these successes raised Pakistan’s hopes of victory considerably.
This was the most critical juncture of the match. With the score now 89 for 3, Baichan was joined by another left-hander, the skipper Clive Lloyd, the last of the team’s five specialist batsmen. The West Indies were clearly in a very vulnerable position. To follow Lloyd were Deryck Murray, Bernard Julien, Keith Boyce, Vanburn Holder, Andy Roberts and Lance Gibbs, who in the first innings had scores of 10, 2, 13, 4, 0 and 0 respectively- a total of 29 runs, made as the side collapsed from 141 for 4 to 214 all out.
Baichan and Lloyd decided to put their heads down to stave off a collapse, and if possible, to ensure the game ended in a draw. This was difficult for the naturally aggressive Lloyd, but suited the temperament and normally defensive approach of Baichan. The two Guyanese enjoyed a long match-saving fourth –wicket partnership of 164 runs, enabling their team to reach 100 in 155 minutes and 200 in 289 minutes. Their stand ended shortly after Baichan reached his coveted century when Lloyd in a hurry to reach his eighth Test hundred was dismissed for 83 with the score at 253.
Baichan reached his hundred with a push through midwicket for two and was besieged by spectators who were chased off the field by baton-wielding police. He had most of the strike in his partnership with Lloyd and had at times to contend with as many as three or four bouncers in an over from the exasperated Safraz Nawaz.
Shortly after Lloyd’s dismissal, with the score 258 for 4 and six of the final regulatory overs remaining, the two captains settled for a draw. Baichan, who had batted throughout the day, was then 105 not out made in 348 minutes and including five fours. The importance of his confident match-saving maiden Test century was highlighted in the headlines in Guyanese newspapers which, for example,stated “Baichan steers West Indies to safe draw”.
Baichan’s hundred was historic in at least two ways. Firstly, he became only the third Guyanese and the ninth West Indian to score a hundred in his first Test match. He followed the example set by George Headley (in 1930), Andy Ganteaume (1948), Bruce Pairaudeau (1953), “Collie” Smith (1955), Conrad Hunte (1958), Lawrence Rowe (1972), Alvin Kallicharran (1972) and Gordon Greenidge (1974).
Secondly, Baichan was only the second player and the first overseas one to score a century in Pakistan on his Test debut. Over ten years before in October 1964, the opener Khalid Ibadulla, had made 166 against Australia at Karachi to become the first Pakistani to score a hundred in his first Test match.
Baichan’s century, followed by scores of 36 and 0 not out in the second Test at Karachi in March 1975, enabled him to finish second in his team’s batting averages. The 161 runs which he scored in his four innings with an average of 80.50 were surpassed only his Kallicharran who made 251 runs in three innings with an average of 125.50.
After his successful debut in Pakistan, Baichan’s subsequent Test career was an anti-climax. He, in fact, represented the West Indies in only one more Test –the sixth and final match at Melbourne in February and March 1976 during the next Test series. In that game, he failed to cope with the pace of Dennis Lillee, Jeffrey Thompson and Gary Gilmour, and was dismissed for 3 and 20 batting at Number 3 after Fredericks and Richards.
Thereafter Baichan was permanently excluded from the West Indies team, though he continued to represent Guyana in the Shell Shield Tournament with fair success until 1980. His exclusion was due largely to the availability of at least three more accomplished openers, namely, Roy Fredericks, Gordon Greenidge and, later, Desmond Haynes.
