A tribute to USA-based former West Indies cricket captain and batting great Alvin Kallicharran on his landmark birthday

West Indies cricket great Alvin Kallicharran during a visit to Mumbai in 2022. Pic/Ashish Raje

Three short-statured champion batsmen, who peaked in the 1970s, were born within the span of six months in the same year of 1949. It’s trivia like this that tickles cricket enthusiasts, adding a delightful ring to their cricket-following. Gundappa Vishwanath turned 75 on February 12 while his brother-in-law Sunil Gavaskar will celebrate his 75th birthday on July 10. Meanwhile, West Indies’s Alvin Kallicharran (Kalli to friends) will be 75 today.

We Indians will remember Kallicharran for his two Test tours to India in 1974-75 and 1978-79, the latter as captain of a second string West Indies team, whose regular stars were part of Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket (WSC) in Australia.

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His maiden tour of India in 1974-75 started with a hundred in the opening Test at Bangalore, the city’s inaugural Test. He rated it as the best among his 12 Test hundreds, played on a track affected by a strong overnight shower. The late sports writer Sunder Rajan wrote glowingly about Kallicharran’s first innings’ 124 in a book on the series: “Kallicharran’s faultless century under none-too-easy circumstances was one of the highlights of the Test [won by the West Indies by 267 runs]. Here was a batsman with the technique and temperament of the highest class. Though many have hailed him as another [Rohan] Kanhai, any resemblance between the two........

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