History of The West Indian Cricket Team - Early Tours

Early Tours

The first major international cricket played in the West Indies was between local, often predominantly white, sides and English tourists – the Middlesex player Robert Slade Lucas toured the West Indies with a team in 1894–95, and two years later Arthur Priestley took a team to Barbados, Trinidad, and Jamaica, which included, for the first time, a match against a side styled "All West Indies", which the West Indians won. Lord Hawke's English team, including several English Test players, toured around the same time, playing Trinidad, Barbados and British Guiana (now Guyana). Then in 1900 the white Trinidadian Aucher Warner, the brother of future England captain Pelham Warner, led a touring side to England, but none of the matches on this tour were given first-class status. Two winters later, in 1901–02, the Hampshire wicketkeeper Richard Bennett's XI went to the West Indies, and played three games against teams styled as the "West Indies", which the hosts won 2–1. In 1904–05, Lord Brackley's XI toured the Caribbean – winning both its games against "West Indies".

The tours to England continued in 1906 when Harold Austin led a West Indian side to England. His side played a number of county teams, and drew their game against an "England XI". However, that England XI only included one contemporary Test player – wicketkeeper Dick Lilley – and he had not been on England's most recent tour, their 1905–6 tour of South Africa. The Marylebone Cricket Club, which had taken over responsibility for arranging all official overseas England tours, visited the West Indies in 1910–11, and 1912–13 but after that there was no international cricket of any note until the West Indian team went to England in 1923. This tour did not include a game against an England team, but there was an end-of-season game against HDG Leveson-Gower's XI against a virtual England Test side at the Scarborough cricket festival, a traditional end-of-season game against a touring side at the English seaside resort of Scarborough, which Leveson-Gower's XI won by only four wickets. 1925–26 saw another MCC tour of the West Indies.

The MCC was eager to promote cricket throughout the British Empire, and on 31 May 1926 the West Indian Cricket Board, along with their New Zealand and Indian counterparts, was elected to the Imperial Cricket Conference (ICC), which previously consisted of the MCC and representatives of Australia and South Africa. Election to full membership of the ICC meant the West Indies could play official Test matches, which is the designation given to the most important international games, and the Windies became the fourth team actually to play a recognised Test match on 23 June 1928 when they took on England at Lord's in London. They did not, however, enjoy immediate success – the West Indies lost all three 3-day Tests in that 1928 tour by a long way, failing to score 250 runs in any of their six innings in that series. They also failed to dismiss England for under 350 runs in a series completely dominated by England.