Hartley Neita
LAST SUNDAY, nearly 100 families who lived in Four Paths, Clarendon, during the era of its prominence in cricket, travelled with their third generations from east, west and south to Mammee Bay in St. Ann, to celebrate the 96th birthday of a man who had given the elders great moments of cricketing pleasure, when we were young.
The man? Martin Waddell. Still six feet-plus tall. Still slim and trim with a little forgivable tummy. And still beaming and cheerful. Hosts for the day were his daughters, Winsome French and Joan Porter, and their families. It was a day of remembering, despite the competition on television of the West Indies/England one-day in St. Lucia.
These were men and women who once travelled every day to Kingston to watch five days of Tests between the West Indies and England and Australia, and the inter-colonials between Jamaica and Barbados, Trinidad and British Guiana; and who also left Four Paths to go to every parish capital to watch the Four Paths and Clarendon Nethersole Cup cricket teams play and defeat many of the best teams in Jamaica during the late thirties, the forties and the fifties.
GEORGE HEADLEY
Four Paths, and its cricket ground, Glenroy Oval, was once host to all the great Jamaica-West Indies cricketers George Headley, Ken Weekes, Neville Bonitto, Colin Bonitto, Hines Johnson, Dickie Fuller, Allan Rae, Irving Iffla, Ken Rickards. As youngsters we had the joy of seeing these greats, free Headley once scored 57 retired at Glenroy Oval. But the star of both the Four Paths and Clarendon teams was Martin Waddell.
He played for Lucas in 1929, capturing five wickets for 45 runs from 12.5 overs in a Junior Cup match against Kingston Police. Two years later he was guest player for Old Harbour in a game against Frankfield when he made 45. In another two years, the Four Paths team, which had become known as the best rural cricket team in Jamaica, played Railway at Glenroy Oval and he captured three wickets for 30. Against Moorlands, in 1935 he took four for 44. In 1934, he was the outstanding batsman for Four Paths, playing in 10 matches, with his highest score of 71 and taking 30 wickets at an average of 7.35.
Two years later he captured three St. Elizabeth wickets for 12 runs to guide Clarendon's victory over St. Elizabeth and win the Nethersole Cup. Then in a match against Middlesex C.C. of Port Maria, one of the great teams of the time, he took three for 23 for Four Paths, enabling his team to defeat Middlesex by 64 Four Paths made 195 all out, to which he contributed 34. He skittled out 11 James Hill batsmen for 52 runs in a friendly match with Four Paths in their two innings.
Playing for Clarendon against Costa Rica at May Pen's Muir Park Oval, he took five wickets for 25 runs, then hit a six and three fours in his 32, while May Pen School's headmaster, E.J. Whiteman took four wickets for eight runs in nine overs. He hit 50 to top score for Clarendon in a Nethersole Cup match against St. Catherine in 1938, and in 1944 when Clarendon won the Nethersole Cup, he took six wickets for 21.
In 1947 he caught the largest 'bag' of wickets in any one innings in the history of the Nethersole Cup competition when his off-breaks and leg-breaks on an unresponsive wicket, ended the Manchester innings with the impressive analysis of 14 overs, two maidens, 49 runs and eight wickets. Teenager Hartley Neita made up for his poor score of three by stumping two to Waddell's mesmerising bowling, and another to Clinton Kenny's off-breakers.
In another Nethersole match against St. Ann he scored a breezy 90 supported by 46 from Dickie Vassell in his one-six-an-over-at-leas' mood, to enable Clarendon to declare at 217 for six and bowl out St. Ann for 63.
In my earlier years when I played cricket, I came across two men who could drop the ball on a three-pence coin eight times straight in an 8-ball over. One was Ronnie Irvine, the captain of the Jamaica College Sunlight team; the other was Martin Waddell. That, I think, was what made him so successful as a bowler. He has been, of course, a living legend for the Four Paths fans. One such legend is that he bowled George Headley for a duck. Another is that he hit George Headley on his pads plumb before and appealed in vain. My father, who was the umpire, told him as he returned to bowl his next ball: "You can appeal until night fall, Martin nobody came here to see you bowl; they came to see Headley bat!"
WOMEN'S CRICKET TEAM
Actually, in what was a farewell, friendly match between Lucas and Four Paths at Glenroy Oval before Weekes and Headley left with the West Indies team for England he did bowl Headley for 11. Interestingly, his sisters Daisy, Edna and May were also members of the Four Paths women's cricket team. In a match against the St. Jago Women's Social and Cricket Club at the Prison Oval in Spanish Town, Daisy (Lawson) captured eight wickets for five runs while May took one for six. Edna Waddell top scored with 22 retired. Patsy Pink, who subsequently gave up cricket for politics, remembers she was bowled for a duck in that match by my sister, Cecile Lennon. And by the way, it was his daughter Karlene who won the Miss Jamaica Farm Queen 1967 title and the Miss Jamaica title the following year. His other daughter, Joan, was Miss Clarendon in the Miss Jamaica contest in 1967.
