Sports

David Murray, West Indies’ unforgiven wicketkeeper, dies aged 72

Published

3 years ago

2022/11/28

David Murray, the former West Indies wicketkeeper whose life and career was ruined by his fateful decision to join the rebel tours of South Africa in the 1980s, has died in his native Barbados at the age of 72.Murray, son of the legendary Sir Everton Weekes, played a total of 19 Tests and ten ODIs for West Indies between 1973 and 1982, and was hailed by the great fast bowlers of his era – Malcolm Marshall and Michael Holding among them – as the finest gloveman that they had played with.

It was Murray’s misfortune that his career ended up being bookended by two of the most legendary Caribbean wicketkeepers of them all – his namesake (but no relation) Deryck Murray, who kept him out of the Test team for much of his pomp, and then at the start of the 1980s, his younger rival Jeff Dujon, who once admitted that Murray’s silky skills made his own glovework look like “Dolly Parton”, but whose superior batting brooked no argument with the selectors.

Ultimately, however, Murray’s predilection for marijuana – a habit that he had begun aged 13 – was the catalyst for his downfall, first as an international cricketer and then, after his fateful decision to accept US$125,000 to tour Apartheid South Africa in the winter of 1983, as a member of society too. His final decades were spent in poverty in his native Barbados, selling drugs to tourists in Bridgetown, and trading on his infamy.

In the early part of his career, while the quality of his glovework was earning plaudits, and with the fast-tracking that came from being the son of a West Indies great, Murray had been adamant that his drug use was beneficial to his cricket. “It gives you good meditation… concentration you know,” he told ESPNcricinfo’s Siddhartha Vaidyanathan back in 2006. “Not that you did it to enhance your performance … never in the breaks – you can’t do that.”

Within the West Indies set-up, however, Murray could never shake the suspicion that his face did not fit, particularly while Deryck – Cambridge-educated and a key lieutenant to Clive Lloyd – was the favoured wicketkeeper. And when, after nearly a decade as the squad’s understudy, he did finally made his Test debut, against Australia in March 1978, it was due in large part to Deryck’s decision to join Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket. It was a source of much frustration – and arguably a factor in his subsequent South Africa decision – that he lost his place again the following year, when the Packer players were reinstated.

In his brief time as the Test No.1, Murray still managed to score three half-centuries, with a best of 84 against India in Bombay in 1978-79, as well as a first-class double-hundred in Jamshedpur on the same tour.However, Murray had already been in trouble with the team management for his off-field antics, notably on the 1975-76 tour of Australia, when it took the intervention of Lance Gibbs to spare him an early flight home. And matters came to a head on West Indies’ return to Australia in 1981-82, where the emergence of Dujon gave the selectors a reason to dispense of a talented but increasingly erratic player.

Bad luck played a major part in Murray’s downfall, too. Early on the tour, he had broken his middle finger while attempting to catch a drive off Lloyd in the nets, but having played through the pain with supreme skill – taking a West Indies’ record nine catches in the first Test at Melbourne – he was rested for the subsequent one-dayers, allowing Dujon to make his case for a permanent berth with a match-winning fifty at the MCG.

Murray reacted badly to Dujon’s promotion. With his drug use now causing him to sleep through team meetings, he turned up for 12th-man duties at the subsequent Adelaide Test without his equipment, and was expelled from the tour by manager Steve Camacho after refusing to take the water cart onto the field.The die was cast for Murray’s recruitment on the South Africa rebel tour. The previous winter, a 12-man party of England cricketers, led by Graham Gooch, had flown into Johannesburg for a month-long tour that contravened the 1977 Gleneagles Agreement discouraging sporting relations with the Apartheid regime.

Compared to the mild censure (and swift forgiveness) that would come to the England players, however, the opprobrium heaped upon the West Indies tourists would be something else entirely. Murray’s tour fee, which he would quickly squander on “jeeps, new cars and partying out”, would be of no lasting benefit in the years to come.

“I f***ed up,” Murray told Ashley Gray, author of the award-winning Unforgiven, which recounted the tale of the West Indian rebels. His first on-field act in South Africa had been to take a catch off Sylvester Clarke in a tour match against Border, but that, as he told Gray, had been a crushing moment in itself. “Lawrence Rowe said to me as a joke, ‘You can’t play for West Indies anymore.’ Only one delivery. It felt bad.”

Murray’s personal life was upended by the South Africa decision, too. In the latter weeks of the Australian tour, he had married his fiancée Kerry McAteer in a private ceremony in Adelaide, but after initially being refused re-entry to the country due to a visa ban implemented by the anti-Apartheid prime minister, Malcolm Fraser, an ill-judged affair cemented his estrangement from his wife and new-born child, and left him rootless and ostracised back in his native Barbados.

He returned home to a “vibe” of rejection, Murray related in Unforgiven. “‘He sold his birthright’. They don’t forget. They are narrow-minded. I still cop it. ‘He is a traitor’. I have no regrets.”

His response was to turn to harder drugs, including cocaine, which in turn deepened his estrangement from his father, who feared he would steal from him to subsidise his habit. For the final decades of his life, Murray was skeletal-thin with matted dreadlocks framing his increasingly gaunt features.

Nevertheless, in 1989, the West Indies Cricket Board rescinded its lifetime ban on the South Africa rebels, and to the extent that forgiveness was achieved in the Caribbean, it was available in Barbados. One of Murray’s fellow rebels, Ezra Moseley, went on to play Test cricket – famously breaking Gooch’s hand in the Trinidad Test in 1990, while Murray’s own son, Ricky Hoyte, was Barbados wicketkeeper in the 1990s, and might have broken into the Test team too had he not shared some of his father’s wayward (if less self-destructive) traits.

Murray himself, however, remained a self-imposed outcast to the end.

(cricinfo)

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Latest News

Ahmedabad to host IPL 2026 final on May 31

Published

55 mins ago

2026/05/6

Priyan

The final will be held on May 31 [BCCI]

The schedule for the IPL 2026 playoffs has been announced, with matches set to be held in Dharamshala, New Chandigarh (Mullanpur) and Ahmedabad. The BCCI has stated that, owing to certain operational and logistical considerations, the Playoffs will be held across three venues “as a special case”.

Qualifier 1 will be played at the HPCA Stadium, in Dharamsala, between the top two ranked teams from the group stages of the points table. The winner will be ensured a direct place in the final.

The Eliminator will be held in New Chandigarh, where the third and fourth ranked teams will feature. The same venue will host Qualifier 2, which will feature the winner of the Eliminator and the loser of Qualifier 1.

The final will be held at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.[Cricbuzz]

Latest News

Samson, Kartik, spinners set up Chennai Super King’s clinical win

Published

5 hours ago

2026/05/6

Priyan

Delhi Capitals get into a huddle at the start of the chase [Cricinfo]

Chennai Super Kings came into IPL 2026 with a dodgy look about their bowling attack. They lost three games straight where their bowlers picked up 10 for 588 at an economy rate of 11.37. Since then, there has been an absolutely stunning turnaround. Over the last seven games, CSK’s bowlers have scooped up 51 wickets – only Gujarat Titans (52) have more – at an economy rate of 8.15 – which no-one can match.

Given first use of a slow pitch, Akeal Hosein (4-0-19-1) and Noor Ahmad (3-0-22-2) took charge of proceedings. Delhi Capitals could only put up 155 for 7, which proved too little as the surface got better to bat on in the second innings. Sanju Samson, who has contributed 24% of CSK’s runs this year, finished things off with 87 not out off 52 balls. Kartik Sharma, growing in confidence, was alongside him, with 41 off 31.

Both captains expected the pitch to be slow. The scoring pattern of the first four overs confirmed it. Fifteen dot balls. Six boundaries. Three singles and a wicket with the batter trying to force the pace. In conditions where the ball comes onto the bat, KL Rahul and Pathum Nissanka might have been able to hit the gap with the shots they played off good length balls. On this one, as much as they tried, they just found the fielder. Worse, they found themselves having to hold their shape for longer and even that didn’t always work.

With two right-handed openers, CSK had no hesitation in handing the ball to Hosein. When Nissanka fell though, DC sent Nitish Rana out in an effort to either hit Hosein out of the attack or prevent him from coming on. This is how much of a no-no matching a left-arm spinner with a left-handed batter is. But CSK bucked tradition. They gave Akeal a third over. He provided Rahul’s wicket and in the end Rana got to face only one ball from Akeal. A dot ball. DC came out of the powerplay 37 for 2. Akeal finished with figures of 4-0-19-1, which is exceptional considering he bowled only one over outside the field restrictions.

Axar Patel has 33 runs this season. Twenty-six of those came in one innings. And his strike rate is 97. It is a massive drop. The DC captain was one of the bright spots last season, their fourth-highest scorer with 263 at a very healthy strike rate of 157. He was in the middle when his team needed to rebuild and his wicket – the third that CSK took in a space of 19 balls between overs 8 and 11 – had an impact on the total they put up.

DC’s first five wickets scored 69 off 66. Sameer Rizvi, Impact Player-ed in because this was definitely an emergency, and Tristan Stubbs together put on 65 off 42 balls. Stubbs seemed to be factoring in the slowness of the pitch into his movements much better, handling Noor’s mystery spin and Gurjapneet Singh’s extra bounce with ease. Rizvi at the other end showed how batters could play against Anshul Kamboj, one of the season’s best death bowlers. He knew Kamboj liked to come around the wicket and target the wide line with yorkers. So he moved across his stumps a little bit, sweeping, slicing and smashing him down the ground.

One part of this plan was premeditation – the movement across his stumps – the other was instinct. Rizvi consciously tried to keep his shot options open, and not just target leg side. Until this match, Kamboj from around the wicket in this IPL has been box office: 63 balls, 93 runs, three sixes, eight wickets. In this game, he struggled: 12 balls, 34 runs, five sixes, no wickets. Meanwhile, Jamie Overton, one of CSK’s best bowlers, bowled only one over and spent time off the field as well.

Being in the form of his life is one thing, but to go out there knowing he is his team’s best hope for runs and managing risk accordingly is something else. Samson has always had aura. Now he has the output. For the first three games this season, he made 22 runs at an average of 7.33 and a strike rate of 116. The next seven, he’s made 380 at an average of 95 and strike rate of 172.

The six he hit first ball against Axar highlighted that the pitch was no longer a problem. A little bit of rain while the match was going on had freshened it up, making the ball come onto the bat better. Even so, DC had threats. Lungi Ngidi returning from a head injury aced his match-up against Ruturaj Gaikwad, dismissing him for a third time in 17 balls for just 10 runs in T20 cricket.

Samson held fire initially. He was 22 off 22 at the eighth over. Ten balls later, he was on fifty. Eventually, he was even entertaining thoughts of a hundred. A highlight of his game was the way he took down spin – 12 off 10 against Axar with one six and 25 off 9 against Kuldeep Yadav with three sixes and a four. CSK won a 12 vs 11 game – because they didn’t even need the impact player – with 15 balls remaining and got a net run-rate boost that could be vital as the season nears the playoffs.

Brief scores:
Chennai Super Kings 159 for 2in 17.3 overs (Sanju Samson 87*, Urvil Patel 17, Kartik Sharma 41*; Axar Patel 1-25, Lungi Ngidi 1-30) beat Delhi Capitals 155 for 7 in 20 overs (Pathum Nissanka 19, KL Rahul 12, Nitish Rana 15, Karun Nair 13, Tristan Stubbs 38, Sameer Rizvi 40, Ashutosh Sharma 14; Akeal Hosein 1-19, Mukesh Choudhari 1-31, Noor Ahamed 2-33, Gurjapneet Singh 1-29, Jamie Overton 1-05) by eight wickets

[Cricinfo]

Sports

Dayasiri swings wildly without sighting the ball

Published

8 hours ago

2026/05/6

Sahan Weerasooriya

Dayasiri Jayasekara served as Sports Minister in Maithripala Sirisena’s government.

Former Sports Minister Dayasiri Jayasekara doesn’t appear to be a great admirer of the recently appointed Cricket Interim Committee. During a television interview with Derana TV, he said that the current government must take responsibility if the newly-appointed panel failed to deliver.

MP Jayasekara has long been known as a man who shoots from the hip and at times, as a doomsday prophet, if his scathing criticism of the Hambantota Port project in the past is anything to go by.

In 2015, retired judge the late Prasanna Jayawardene formulated a comprehensive restructuring plan for Sri Lankan cricket, modelled along South African lines and SLC sought time from the ICC to implement these sweeping changes.

However, powerful cricketing figures within the government at that time sensed danger and convinced President Maithripala Sirisena to effect a Cabinet reshuffle. The Sports Ministry was shifted from the UNP to the SLFP.

Having switched his political alliance to the ruling party yet again, Dayasiri was brought in as Minister of Sports.

At his first interaction with the media, he left a strong impression. There was genuine optimism as he answered questions intelligently, spoke of the bigger picture and explained the legal framework required to drive reforms with striking clarity. Those present walked away convinced that he was the right man to take sports forward.

However, under his watch, reforms were stalled, fresh elections were called and SLFP strongmen returned to the helm of SLC. It was, without doubt an opportunity missed. Soon, the Minister of Sports found himself a prisoner of his own SLFP colleagues within government ranks.

From thereon, Dayasiri made a series of blunders. He became embroiled in a running battle with fast bowler Lasith Malinga, with their public spats repeatedly going viral across social media platforms.

Sri Lanka were touring India in 2017 and the limited-overs squad was preparing to fly to Delhi for the second leg of the tour. Dayasiri raised a storm, insisting that the Sports Minister’s approval had not been obtained before the team’s departure. Despite SLC apologising for the oversight, he demanded that the players return home and follow protocol. Appeals were made to the Minister over the phone by the players, but he refused to budge. The players were ordered to disembark. Those who doubt this episode can verify it with Thisara Perera, who captained the white ball team.

During his recent television interview, Dayasiri came out with a range of conspiracy theories, including claims of intervention by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi before Shammi Silva was asked to step down. With the world grappling with a crisis in the Gulf region, the leader of the world’s largest democracy surely has bigger fish to fry than meddling in another nation’s cricketing affairs.

The former Minister also questioned how newly appointed head coach Gary Kirsten would function alongside the Interim Committee, while casting aspersions on Justice Chithrasiri – whose recommendations on cricket governance are expected to come into force soon – branding him a government loyalist.

No government is without fault and criticism is both necessary and healthy. But Dayasiri, in this instance, appears to be swinging wildly without sighting the ball and his words are best taken with a pinch of salt.

by Rex Clementine