A sad tale of a prodigious talent that went to waste

It is sad to note that the ongoing home Test series between India and the West Indies has generated very little interest among the followers of the game. The home team won the first Test by an innings and more, closing the game within three days, demonstrating in no uncertain terms their overwhelming superiority over the visitors.

The fact that the West Indies went down without offering any semblance of fight was disappointing for the old-timers, who still hold warm memories about the brilliance demonstrated by cricketers from the Caribbean islands.

Amidst the gloom of despondency over the poor quality of cricket on display came the news of the demise of Bernard Julian, who had toured India with the West Indies side led by Clive Lloyd in 1974-75. Julian was an all-rounder who bowled left-arm medium pace with a whippy action and contributed useful runs with the bat in the lower middle-order. A handsome person, he was popular with the crowds, especially with the fairer sex, amongst whom he enjoyed a large following. The fact that the series of 1974-75 was considered one of the best played in the country until the tour of Aussies in 2001 added to the charm and appeal of members of the touring side.

Julian was born in Trinidad in 1950. He was initiated into cricket at an early age and moved up the rungs of school and college cricket before his initiation into the game at the first-class level during the 1968-69 season. Like most other talented West Indian cricketers of that period, Julian moved to England to sharpen his skills and play cricket as a professional. He started by playing for Kent second eleven before graduating to play at the first-class level in 1972. His consistent performances in first-class cricket won him a place in the West Indies team under Rohan Kanhai that toured England in 1973.

Though he did not set the Thames on fire on his debut in the first Test of the series at Lord’s, Julian found his groove in the remaining two matches. He struck a half-century in the second Test and followed it up with a hundred (121) in the next one, where he was involved in a big partnership with the legendary Gary Sobers. In fact, Julian was one of the three all-rounders in the side, along with Sobers and Keith Boyce, and was expected to use this series as a learning experience. His ability to bowl both medium pace and spin with his left hand and his prowess with the willow marked him as a potential successor to Sobers, who was by then in the twilight of his career.

England surprised the hosts by coming up from behind to win the last Test and square the series 1-1, when they visited the West Indies in 1974. This series will go down in history as the last one played by Sobers and Kanhai. Julian was the second-highest wicket-taker for the West Indies, with 16 scalps to his credit. He also equipped himself fairly well with the bat, scoring half-centuries in the first two Tests. He also earned a well-deserved reputation for finding a chink in the technique of the great Geoff Boycott and dismissing him repeatedly during the series.

The series against India in 1974-75 was the first one played by Julian without the shadow of Sobers looming large over his head. He missed the first Test at Bangalore due to an injury and scored a quick-fire 45 in the only innings the visitors batted in the next match at Delhi. But he could not get going with the bat in the next two Tests at Kolkata and Chennai, which were played on tracks helpful to spin bowlers. But Julian always managed to find a breakthrough early in the innings and offered excellent support to Andy Roberts, who moved in as the spearhead of the attack. Julian’s contribution during the last game at Mumbai was the dismissal of Farokh Engineer for a “pair” in what turned out to be the final appearance of the flamboyant wicket-keeper batsman in Tests.

Julian was a key member of the West Indies side that won the inaugural World Cup in 1975. He began by picking up four wickets in the first match the side played, against Sri Lanka, and repeated this feat during the semifinals, where they defeated New Zealand. In the final against Australia, Julian made an unbeaten 26 and anchored his side’s innings during the end overs’. The significance of this knock can be gauged from the fact that only 17 runs separated the winners from the vanquished.

The tour to Australia in 1975-76 can be considered the turning point in his career. The West Indies were thrashed 1-5 in this series as they could not cope with the thunderbolts hurled at them by the duo of Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson, with the able support of Max Walker and Gary Gilmour. Julian, with a haul of 11 wickets and 124 runs in the three Tests, did not pull his weight.

When the visiting Indian side successfully chased a last-innings target of 404 in the Test at Trinidad in 1976, skipper Lloyd decided that he had had enough with medium pace bowlers and spinners. There was no point in depending on them if they could not defend even large totals; henceforth, Lloyd would rely on his speedsters to the exclusion of every other form of bowling.

This formula was put into practice when the West Indies toured England in 1976. The visitors won the five-match series 3-0, with Roberts and Michael Holding taking 28 wickets apiece. They were ably supported by Wayne Daniel, who could match the Roberts and Holding when it came to the speed at which a cricket ball could be bowled and Vanburn Holder, the master of cut and swing. Julian played the first two Tests without doing anything remarkable and was dropped after that. His last appearance for the West Indies was against Pakistan during the series in 1977. By this time, Colin Croft and Joel Garner had also arrived on the scene, posing a serious threat to Julian’s place in the side.

Though Julian was drafted into Kerry Packer’s World Series cricket (WSC) along with the first lot of West Indian players, he was not selected to play in any of the super Tests or the matches that the West Indies played against World XI or Australia. The emergence of the quartet of super-fast bowlers and a new all-rounder named Collis King saw him being pushed to the sidelines. He was not included in the West Indies side for the 1979 World Cup, which took place after a compromise was reached between the traditional cricket establishment and Kerry Packer. His performances in the domestic first-class circuit also started becoming sketchy, with the result that he was considered a “has-been” by the selectors even before he turned 30.

Julian’s career was at a dead-end when he decided to throw in his lot with the set of players who were offered a huge sum of money to play in South Africa, then banned from playing international cricket due to “Apartheid”. This had even bigger significance in the West Indies as the population consisted almost entirely of “coloured” persons, who were at the receiving end of Apartheid. Hence, it was a huge coup for the South African cricket establishment to lure a set of West Indian players by offering them big money to play matches in their country.

The players sought out by the organisers were former stars who were dropped from the West Indies side due to poor form or their inability to hold their places when fresh talent came in. Julian was an easy prey for getting lured as he stood little chance of making it back to international cricket, given the strength of West Indies team at that point of time. He toured South Africa twice - in 1982 and 1983 - and returned with a considerably fatter bank balance.

This move effectively finished off Julian’s cricket career as “rebels”, as the group of players were called, were banned for life by the West Indies Cricket Board. There was little sympathy for them from the public either, as they were considered to have “sold their soul for a few rands”. Julian, who had by then got used to the pleasures of life, did not perform wonders with either the bat or ball during the matches on these tours, though he had a roaring time off the field.

The last phase of the life of this talented cricketer was a difficult one. His tendency to splurge ensured that he had little remaining in his bank account. Though authorities tried to help him by landing him some coaching assignments, absenteeism and mood swings stood in the way of developing this as a source of livelihood. He battled throat cancer since the turn of the century and had to seek the help of the Government of Trinidad to pay hospital bills. His journey finally came to an end on October 4.

Two reasons are broadly attributed to Julian not reaching his full potential as a cricketer, despite being blessed with tons of talent. The first issue was the comparison with Sobers and the pressure he faced to match the exacting standards set by the great man, which Julian was unable to cope with. The second was a more fatal flaw of focusing more on the good things in life than on performing on the cricket field. He developed a weakness for wine and women that proved to be his undoing as a cricketer.

In the final analysis, the career of Bernard Julian tells us the sad story of a prodigious talent that went to waste. With the benefit of hindsight, one can say that this only reconfirms the principle underlying the oft-quoted adage - “genius is 1 per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration”.