Joe Solomon and the Spirit of Port Mourant

This tribute to Joe Solomon (1930-), now the oldest West Indies Test cricketer, celebrates the career ''and its context'' of this reliable lower middle order batsman on his 92nd birthday. Solomon is from Port Mourant, an exceptional sugar plantation on the Corentyne Coast in Guyana (formerly British Guiana), birthplace of the Guyanese leader Cheddi Jagan (1918-97), as well as several other Test cricketers: John Trim, Rohan Kanhai, Basil Butcher, Ivan Madray and Alvin Kallicharran. Solomon played in 14 of the 15 Tests led by the first black captain of the West Indies, Sir Frank Worrell (1924-67), between 1960 and 1963. Worrell''s teams rekindled passion widely for a game that had become stodgy in the late 1950s. Though less flamboyant, Joe was the even-tempered stabiliser in a team of gifted, if mercurial, stroke-makers. In December 1960, Solomon executed two run outs, direct hits when Australia was on the verge of victory, that were instrumental in effecting the first Tied Test in the hi