West Indian cricketer
George Copeland
"
Jackie
"
Grant
(9 May 1907 ? 26 October 1978) was a West Indian
cricketer
who captained the
West Indies
in
Test cricket
between 1930 and 1935. He was later a missionary in
South Africa
and
Rhodesia
.
Appointed to the Test captaincy at the age of 23, Grant led the West Indies team on its first tour of Australia in 1930?31, and later to its first series victory, when it beat England in 1934?35.
Grant went on to be a teacher in
Southern Rhodesia
,
Trinidad and Tobago
and
Grenada
, and inspector of schools in
Zanzibar
. From 1949 to 1956 he was the principal of the mission school
Adams College
near
Durban
, until the school was forcibly closed as part of the
apartheid
punitive education laws. He then undertook missionary work in
Rhodesia
, concentrating on the education and welfare of black Africans, until the
Ian Smith
government refused him permission to return to the country in 1975.
Early life and studies
[
edit
]
George Copeland Grant was born in
Port of Spain
,
Trinidad and Tobago
. His grandfather,
Kenneth James Grant
, was a Canadian
Presbyterian
missionary
who lived in Trinidad from 1870 to 1907. Kenneth James Grant's son, Thomas Geddes Grant (born in Canada in 1866), founded a trading company, T. Geddes Grant, in Trinidad in 1901, and later discovered oil on a cocoa estate he had bought. He and his wife Christina had seven boys and three girls. George and his twin sister Janet (who were always known in the family as Jack and Jill) were the eighth and ninth children;
Rolph
was the tenth. Like all his brothers, George was educated at
Queen's Royal College
in Port of Spain. He captained the school's
cricket
and
soccer
teams, and because of his cricket ability he was sent to
Christ's College, Cambridge
, unlike his older brothers and sisters, who had studied at Canadian universities.
[1]
Grant attended Cambridge from 1926 to 1930 to study History and qualify as a teacher, with the intention of returning to Queen's Royal College to teach. He played
first-class cricket
for
the university
, and gained
Blues
in cricket and soccer.
[2]
He also met a fellow student, Ida Russell from
Southern Rhodesia
, daughter of Sir
Fraser Russell
, and they became engaged at Cambridge and later married.
[3]
Cricket career
[
edit
]
A middle-order batsman and occasional fast-medium bowler, Grant played one
first-class
match for
Cambridge University
in 1928, then established himself in the side in 1929, scoring 691 runs in 14 matches at an average of 31.40.
[4]
He improved on this record in 1930, when he scored 716 runs in 11 matches at an average of 44.75, including his first
century
, 100 against
Sussex
.
[5]
In 1930, while in his final months at Cambridge, Grant was offered the captaincy of the
West Indies Test team
on its tour of Australia in 1930-31. This was an unusual appointment, as not only had he not played Test cricket, he had never played first-class cricket in the West Indies. He said: "I was younger than all of the sixteen players, save three; and most of these sixteen had already played for the West Indies, and I had not. Yet I was the captain. It could not be disputed that my white colour was a major factor in my being given the post."
[6]
At the time the West Indian authorities considered it essential that the Test team be led by a white man, despite the fact that the top players were black, such as
George Headley
and
Learie Constantine
.
[7]
The tour of Australia was not a success, the West Indies losing the first four Tests easily. They regained some pride in the Fifth Test, when Grant's two well-timed
declarations
put Australia under pressure on a difficult pitch and the West Indies won in a close finish by 30 runs.
[8]
Despite their modest results, the West Indians were popular in Australia, wrote the Australian cricket historian
A. G. Moyes
, because they "played cricket as though it was great fun ? seriously enough but with gaiety mixed with gravity". Grant led the team's Test batting averages with 255 runs at 42.30, including 53 not out and 71 not out in the Second Test.
[9]
He was the first player in
Test cricket
to score two unbeaten fifties in the same match.
[10]
While teaching in
Southern Rhodesia
, Grant played for
Rhodesia
in the 1931-32
Currie Cup
under the captaincy of
Hamish Campbell-Rodger
, helping the team to finish a close second in the competition.
[11]
He played his first first-class match in the West Indies in 1932-33, when he led one of the sides in a match to help select
the team to tour England
later that year.
The 1933 tour of England was another unsuccessful tour. Of the three Tests England won two and the other was drawn.
[12]
Grant scored 1195 runs in the season at an average of 30.64, with two centuries,
[4]
including his highest first-class score of 115 against an England XI at the end of the tour when he added 226 for the third wicket with Headley.
[13]
In the Tests, however, he made only 102 runs in six innings. In the Second Test at Manchester he asked his fastest bowlers,
Manny Martindale
and Learie Constantine, to use
bodyline
tactics. The English batsmen were unable to play it confidently ? except for the captain,
Douglas Jardine
, who scored his only Test century and saved the English innings from collapse. Grant said admiringly of Jardine's innings: "Never once did he flinch. Never once did he lose his nerve." Having now seen bodyline in action, Grant did not use it again.
[14]
Grant's last Test series was the
English tour of 1934-35
. West Indies won this series two to one with one Test drawn. In the First Test, on a rain-affected pitch where all the batsmen struggled, Grant declared the second innings at 51 for 6, setting England 73 to win in the hope that the state of the pitch would defeat the English team, but they won with six wickets down after being 48 for 6.
[15]
West Indies won the Second and Fourth Tests, thus winning a series for the first time.
[16]
When Grant had to leave the field with an injury late in the Fourth Test he asked Constantine to captain the side in his absence, and Constantine led the team to victory.
[17]
Despite this success, Grant retired from international cricket after the series, aged 27. He decided that there were things he wanted to do with his life that a continuing involvement in Test cricket would not allow him to do: "For to me cricket was a game, not my life. Also it was not my profession. Therefore, in conscience, I could not give it the priority that others did and also expected me to do."
[18]
At the same time as his cricket career Grant also played soccer for the Trinidad and Tobago national team.
[2]
Teaching career
[
edit
]
Grant began his teaching career in
Southern Rhodesia
in 1931. He taught for two terms at
Plumtree School
and then briefly at
Milton High School
before accepting the offer of a position at his old school, Queen's Royal College. Before leaving Southern Rhodesia, he and Ida ? who was also teaching, at the Hope Fountain Mission near
Bulawayo
? were married in Bulawayo in May 1932.
[19]
He taught at Queen's Royal College until 1935, when he accepted an offer of the Principalship of
Grenada Boys' Secondary School
, where he stayed until 1943.
[20]
He and Ida had three children, two boys and a girl. In 1939 one of the boys died in early childhood of
diphtheria
.
[20]
He worked in
Zanzibar
for the British Colonial Education Service from 1944 to 1949, including a period as Inspector of Schools, but he and his wife found it difficult to live in a predominantly Muslim country where there was little scope for the kind of Christian work they wanted to do. He accepted an offer of the position of Principalship of
Adams College
near
Durban
, where he began work early in 1949.
[21]
Adams College
[
edit
]
Between 1933 and 1945 Adams College had become one of the most important schools for black education in South Africa.
[22]
Cricket had been introduced to the school in the 1930s, and Grant raised the status of the game among the black population around
Durban
and made Adams College a centre for the sport.
[23]
Adams College faced major opposition from the
National Party
government, especially after the
Bantu Education Act
came into force. The government wanted black students to be prepared for menial jobs under white bosses, and this was the opposite of what Adams College was trying to achieve. The minister allowed the nearby
Inanda Seminary School
for girls to operate outside the act, but in 1956, it got to an ultimatum and the staff refused to stop teaching academic and aspirational education.
[24]
Despite Grant's efforts the government made the college's position impossible, and the school was liquidated.
[25]
The school held a service in December 1956 to mark the end of its operation. Grant took a leading role in this service when he paraphrased
Hugh Latimer
to say: "Be of good comfort, Adams College. We have these years lit such a candle in South Africa as I trust shall never be put out".
[25]
The school was sold to the government and Grant left South Africa. The government agreed not to use the name Adams College for the school it planned to set up in the college's place.
[26]
This demise of a leading school was documented by Grant in his book
The Liquidation of Adams College
, and later in his memoirs.
[27]
[25]
After apartheid ended in the 1990s, the school was restored as Adams College.
Missionary work
[
edit
]
Grant and his wife spent a year in
Nigeria
working for the
International Missionary Council
, organising an all-Africa Christian conference, which was held in Nigeria in 1958 and led to the formation of the
All Africa Conference of Churches
.
[28]
They then returned to
Rhodesia
to do missionary work. In their work they frequently found themselves at odds with the colonial authorities in their attitudes to the position of blacks in Rhodesian society. Their difficulties increased with the advent in 1965 of the
Ian Smith
government and its racial policies.
[29]
In the early 1960s they opened the first private multi-racial school in Rhodesia, in Chikore, about 130 km east of
Salisbury
.
[30]
They helped to create and run a charitable organisation called Christian Care to help the families of political detainees ? including paying school fees and rent, helping wives visit their husbands in detention camps, and distributing clothing from overseas donations.
[31]
Eventually, returning to Rhodesia in 1975 after some time abroad, they were refused permission to re-enter the country.
[32]
Retirement
[
edit
]
After spells teaching at
Woodbrooke Selly Oak Colleges
in England and the United Church Missionary Residence in
Auburndale, Massachusetts
, Grant and Ida retired to
Cambridge
in England. Grant had agreed to be
Christian Aid
secretary for the Cambridge area, but died suddenly in hospital there before he could begin, aged 71.
[32]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Jack Grant,
Jack Grant's Story
, Lutterworth, Guildford and London, 1980, pp. 1?10.
- ^
a
b
"George Copeland Grant"
. bestoftrinidad.com
. Retrieved
8 August
2013
.
- ^
Grant,
Jack Grant's Story
, pp. 11?26.
- ^
a
b
"First-class Batting and Fielding in Each Season by Jackie Grant"
.
CricketArchive
. Retrieved
5 April
2020
.
- ^
"Cambridge University v Sussex 1930"
.
Cricinfo
. Retrieved
5 April
2020
.
- ^
Grant,
Jack Grant's Story
, p. 31.
- ^
Bull, Andy (2 February 2009).
"The forgotten story of ... white West Indian cricketers"
.
Talking Sport
. The Guardian
. Retrieved
8 August
2013
.
- ^
"5th Test, West Indies tour of Australia at Sydney, Feb 27 - Mar 4 1931"
.
Cricinfo
. Retrieved
5 April
2020
.
- ^
A. G. Moyes
,
Australian Cricket: A History
, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1959, pp. 478?81.
- ^
"Two unbeaten fifties in a match"
.
Cricinfo
. Retrieved
5 April
2020
.
- ^
"Rhodesian first-class cricket in 1931/32"
. Cricinfo
. Retrieved
5 April
2020
.
- ^
"West Indies to England 1933"
.
Test Cricket Tours
. Retrieved
18 April
2020
.
- ^
"England XI v West Indians 1933"
.
CricketArchive
. Retrieved
18 April
2020
.
- ^
Grant,
Jack Grant's Story
, pp. 170?72.
- ^
"1st Test, England tour of West Indies at Bridgetown, Jan 8-10 1935"
.
Cricinfo
. Retrieved
18 April
2020
.
- ^
"England to West Indies in 1934-35"
.
Test Cricket Tours
. Retrieved
18 April
2020
.
- ^
Grant,
Jack Grant's Story
, pp. 179?80.
- ^
Grant,
Jack Grant's Story
, pp. 51?52.
- ^
Grant,
Jack Grant's Story
, pp. 36?46.
- ^
a
b
Grant,
Jack Grant's Story
, pp. 59?71.
- ^
Grant,
Jack Grant's Story
, pp. 72?84.
- ^
Rich, Paul B. (1993).
Hope and Despair: English-speaking intellectuals and South African politics: 1896-1976
. London u.a.: British Acad. Press. p. 77.
ISBN
1850434891
.
- ^
Odendaal, Andre (2003).
The Story of an African Game: black cricketers and the unmasking of one of South Africa's greatest myths, 1850-2003
. Cape Town: David Philip. p. 66.
ISBN
0864866380
.
- ^
Elphick, Richard (2012).
The Equality of Believers: Protestant missionaries and the racial politics of South Africa
. Charlottesville [Va.]: University of Virginia Press.
ISBN
978-0-8139-3273-6
.
- ^
a
b
c
Grant,
Jack Grant's Story
, pp. 85?112.
- ^
Healey-Clancy, Megan (13 August 2023).
A World of Their Own A History of South African Women's Education
. UKZN Press. p. Chap 4.
ISBN
978-1-86914-242-1
.
- ^
Grant, George C (1955).
The Liquidation of Adams College
. 1957.
OCLC
744522787
.
{{
cite book
}}
: CS1 maint: location (
link
) CS1 maint: location missing publisher (
link
)
- ^
Grant,
Jack Grant's Story
, pp. 113?21.
- ^
Grant,
Jack Grant's Story
, pp. 122?62.
- ^
Grant,
Jack Grant's Story
, pp. 133?35.
- ^
Grant,
Jack Grant's Story
, pp. 150?57.
- ^
a
b
Grant,
Jack Grant's Story
, p. 193.
External links
[
edit
]
|
---|
|
Italics
denote deputised captaincy
|