Lancelot Richard Gibbs was born in Georgetown,
Guyana, on September 29, 1934. He began his
active involvement in cricket as a fourteen year
old, practicing his newly discovered interest,
initially in the form of a leg-spinner, on the field of
the Demerara Cricket Club in the neighborhood of
Queenstown where he lived. From that inauspicious
beginning Gibbs’ further development progressed to
his eventually becoming indisputably the greatest offspinner
the West Indies has ever produced and one
of the very best the world has ever seen. By the time
he’d played his last of his 79 Tests for the West Indies,
on February 5 1976 against Australia he’d taken 309
wickets. In the process and at that time he’d also become
only the second bowler to pass the 300 Test wickets
threshold and the very first spinner to ever do so.
Gibbs’ overall statistics in Tests are impressively
outstanding. In his 79 Test matches, he bowled 27,115
balls with very few wides or no-balls conceding runs at
just 1.98 per over. The records also show that he took
ten wickets in an innings on three occasions during his
Test career, the statistics for which also include 18 fivefors.
Of his many notable feats in Test cricket, stand his
three wickets in four balls against Australia in Sydney
in 1960/61 after being omitted from the first two Tests.
In the fourth Test at Adelaide, he went a step further by
taking a hat-trick – the first eer against Australia in the
20th Century.
The following year in March 1962 at Kensington Oval,
Gibbs turned in one of the most remarkable Test bowling
performances, He captured eight Indian wickets for six
runs in a devastating 15.3-over spell with 14 maidens.
That outstanding performance led the West Indies to
a convincing innings and 30-run victory. It alao resulted
in Gibbs becoming the first-ever West Indian bowler to
take eight wickets in a home Test. The match seemed
headed for a draw at lunch on the final day when Gibbs
spun his magic.
Gibbs would later give the credit for that performance to the outstanding leadership of the then
West Indies captain, Sir Frank Worrell.
“He would instill you with the confidence you’ve got,
and be able to make you get wickets.” Dilip Sardesai
and Vijay Manjrekar had taken India to 158 for 2. “I
had bowled thirty-something overs and I hadn’t gotten
a wicket. Coming down the steps, I was feeling a ‘lil down
in the dumps, and he said, ‘Young man, it’s your turn again,’
and he tossed the ball to me. And I bowled 15 overs, 14
maidens and got eight wickets for six runs!”
Gibbs’ development also benefited from his exposure to
English County Cricket. He joined Warwickshire in 1967
before the days of instant registration and had to spend
12 months qualifying.
In his first full Season at Warwickshire (1968) he
captured 67 wickets. His most successful season in
England was 1971 in which Gibbs claimed 131 firstclass
wickets at only 18.89, with nine five-wicket
hauls.
That exceptional performance gained Gibbs
a Wisden Cricketer of the Year award in the
following year’s Almanack. Gibbs ended his
Warwickshire career in 1973 with yet another
100+ wickets Season.
Gibbs’ success in English county cricket, where
every player knows each other’s strengths and
weaknesses so well was in no small measure due
to his unerring accuracy of line, the top premium for
slow bowlers of his kind. It also taught him the benefits of bowling
much closer to the stumps.
During his English County Championship years, as Warwickshire’s
primary off-spinner, Gibbs became an active bowler, taking less time
to bowl an over than almost any other spinner. He also mastered
the art of containing batsmen frustratingly without being purely
defensive, restricting without ceasing to attack.
Lance Gibbs
West Indies Cricket’s Greatest Ever
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Gibbs’ Warwickshire years were also a demonstration of his
default inclination to place the interests of his team above
those of his own. He bowled well over 1000 overs one
Season, under the serious handicap of a nagging groin injury
in addition, at times, to a painfully sore spinning finger. As if
that were not enough, during the last five or six weeks of that
particular Season he also continued playing with a chipped
bone in his left thumb.
Bowling with a sore spinning finger also became a common
characteristic of Gibbs’ latter years as a West Indies Test
cricketer. He customarily spun the ball so hard that the skin
from his spinning finger would be shred in the process, A
testimony of his dedication to his craft.
That dedication had always been evident from the very
start of Gibbs’ cricket involvement, as a fourteen-year-old
Queenstown teenager. His initial involvement had been
inspired by his admiration of Robert Christiani, the Guyana
and West Indies batsman and Gibbs’ fellow Queenstown
neighbor.
“Robert Christiani was a National Hero. I wanted to be just
like him, so I followed him around. I figured if he could get to
where he was as a National Hero by simply playing cricket,
then so could I!”
In pursuit of his objective to duplicate Robert Christiani’s
exploits and National stature, Gibbs became like a professional
cricketer. He would get up early in the morning to go running,
He ran for seven miles every day, from Queenstown to
Plaisance and back, much to the bemusement of onlookers many
of whom considered him to be a madman.
Playing his Club cricket as a member of the Demerara Cricket
Club (DCC), Gibbs was also the first at the nets and the last
to leave. He would also practice bowing at a single stump and
would get the fellas from the school next door, St Ambrose
AME, to throw the ball back to him. He would put a spot, a
white spot, outside off stump, as if he was bowling to a righthander
and would religiously aim at pitching the balls he
bowled exactly on it. That routine was practiced daily, from
3:00 pm each evening until such time that it became so dark
as to make it impossible to continue.
Gibbs also gives credit for his development during those early
DCC days to the late Berkley Gaskin, As the DCC President
and former British Guiana National captain, Gaskin had also
played two Tests for the West Indies against England in 1947-
48.
“Berkeley Gaskin (the late West Indies cricketer and
administrator) was the man controlling cricket at the club at
the time. He was my mentor and the one that really inspired
me…The fact that my father (Ebenezer) died when I was
young was another impetus for me to want to play the sport
professionally and provide for my family, which I did.”
Under Gaskin’s mentorship, Gibbs’ career developed as a
Case Cup player for the DCC.
In a relatively short time, and as a direct result of his outstanding Case Cup performances, he was eventually selected to the British Guiana National team, as the country was known as back then.
Strangely enough the bowler who was to reach the greatest heights as a master of off-spin
began bowling leg-breaks. In his early days he basically turned the ball the other way, only
occasionally slipping in an off-break or two, That caused his lengths to suffer which made
it difficult for captains to set fields for his bowing.
“I could spin the ball bowling leg-spin, but I could not bowl the googly. I would bowl an
off-break and it was easy for a batsman to hit it through mid-wicket. If you are bowling
off-spin, you would obviously have more men on the leg-side. My line and length as far as
off-spin bowling was concerned was particularly good. With leg spin, it’s harder to control.”
It was actually the former England Test wicketkeeper Arthur McIntyre who convinced
Gibbs to switch from bowling leg spin to becoming an off-spinner. While doing some
coaching in Guyana, McIntyre told Gibbs that he would have to choose between the two
bowling styles. Gibbs turned to off-spin and it was a success. He had always been capable of spinning the
ball, but the transition provided much more control of his lines and lengths as well as his
variations of pace.
Playing on the small DCC ground along with his rigorous training regimens of daily runs and
extensive first-to-arrive-last-to-leave practices also provided Gibbs’ with the foundations
for his eventual outstandingly successful career as an international cricketer. During his
early Case Cup cricket years being able to bowl at DCC without being carted around was
also a feather in his cap which came in very handy when he began making his international
appearances on much larger grounds.
Gibbs made his first-class debut at the age of 19 in February, 1954, against MCC for British
Guiana. He took two wickets which cost him 126 runs. The only special significance of that
far distant occasion was that those two victims had already made a distinguished mark
in the game. They were Tom Graveney, caught in the deep for 231, and Denis Compton,
bowled for a more modest 18. No one knew it then, but Gibbs had arrived.
With his lissome figure and unusually long fingers, Lance Gibbs allied pronounced spin and
bounce to a fierce accuracy, and all from an unusual chest-on action. In his later years he
added the arm-ball to his repertoire, to combine with his almost unlimited stamina and
determination (he had a permanently sore and often split spinning-finger.
Gibbs who made his Test debut against Pakistan in 1958, had by then also benefited from
the further advice that had been provided by his mentor Berkeley Gaskin. As the West
Indies Team Manager, Gaskin had advised Gibbs that when bowling he should let his arm
be as close as possible to his ear. “That means it is high up, and if you’re spinning the ball
and you put it down in a certain spot, you can get bounce. So the ball is not going to hit the
middle of the bat, it’s going to hit the edges.”
Gibbs’ outstanding success as a Test cricketer was also fueled by his ability to study opposing
batsmen. On his very own and without the assistance of any of the computer-equipped
analysts that have become such a major part of contemporary Test cricket, he developed
the habit of identifying the strengths and weaknesses of all the batsmen he faced as bowler.
Gibbs became an expert at knowing where exactly to bowl at them to both contain and
eventually capture their respective wickets. His Test wickets haul, overall average and
economy rates are now all testimonials to his expertise.
In addition to being Test cricket’s highest wicket-taker for five years, from 1976-1981,
before Australia’s Dennis Lillee eventually went past his 309 wickets, Gibbs was also an
outstanding fielder to his own bowling. He was also a gully specialist where he grasped the
majority of his 52 Test match catches.
“I put in a lot of time on the catching cradle at DCC where the ball came off at different
angles,” he said. “That’s how I was able to sharpen my reflexes and become a specialist in
that close-to-the-wicket position!”
Having just recently celebrated his 87th birthday, Lance
Gibbs resides in Florida with his wife Joy, and in close
proximity to their two children – Richard and Kelly-Ann
Cartwright. Both of whom are respectively in their own
rights successful professionals.
Although now no longer directly involved in West Indies
cricket, he still follows the team ardently. In doing so he has,
however, long since become frustrated and disappointment
at the lack of discipline and professionalism displayed by
young up and coming players, as well as their unwillingness
to seek advice from former players to enhance their
knowledge of the game. Factors which he thinks have
contributed directly to the West Indies’ painfully obvious
inability to reproduce a spin bowler anywhere near to his
outstanding capabilities in the now 45 years that have
passed since his own 1976 retirement as a Test cricketer.
“I benefited from picking the brains of former players,” he
said. “I always sought advice if I figured I could gain from
it. I used to talk to players who I thought could help me
improve my game and they were quite pleased to give
me advice…It’s only in the West Indies that young people
don’t seek advice and autographs. You go to England and
other countries and they would line up to get your name
on anything.
“As a youngster, I had a book with cricket clippings. As
previously mentioned I also used to look out of my window
at home just to see Robert Christiani, who lived just a few
doors down the street, walk past my house. That was how
keen I was about the sport.”