WEST Indies cricketing greats Clive Lloyd and Rohan Kanhai were among the mourners at the funeral of Sonny Ramadhin.
Local cricket was also well represented as the service was also a celebration of the life of the 92-year-old who lived in Delph and was also a respected Saddleworth pub landlord.
Sonny, who was president of Friarmere Cricket Club, was fittingly carried into the chapel by club officials Gary Kershaw, Roy Smith and Andy Walker along with well-known local cricketer Peter Skuse.
His coffin was draped in the West Indies cricket flag and the processional music could not have been more fitting, Victory Calypso – Cricket Lovely Cricket.
That was penned to mark the first-ever West Indies win on English soil in the second Test at Lord’s in 1950 when Sonny and Alf Valentine spun their side to victory.
Sonny took 11 wickets in the match and Valentine eight and the calypso chorus was ‘with those little pals of mine, Ramadhin and Valentine’.
Every seat was taken by family, friends and many from the close-knit cricket family and some had to watch the live stream from outside the chapel.
The stream was also viewed globally, and Sonny’s son Craig received messages from the West Indies – Sonny was raised in Trinidad – and Australia.
Celebrant Roger Fielding eloquently told Sonny’s story as did family friend Roy Smith who, in his eulogy, unearthed a plethora of statistical information which proved just how great a cricketer he was.
Roy said: “His bare statistics may not be exceptional compared to modern figures. Why? Because they played fewer Test matches in those days, but his name will be forever in cricket history.
“There are not many people who have had songs written about them, their face on a postage stamp, a statue erected in their honour and a road named after them, A Wisden cricketer of the year 1951, an honorary life member of the MCC, the highest awards from Trinidad &Tobago including the Hummingbird Medal (Gold) and the Chaconia Medal (Gold) and he also appeared in the famous tied Test match against Australia in 1960.”
Roy detailed Sonny’s first-class career which stretched from Jan 1950 to July 1965 and encompassed 184 games of which 43 were Test matches. He took 758 wickets at an average of 20.24, of which 158 dismissals were in Tests at 28.98.
He took five wickets in an innings 51 times, better than one in four games, a remarkable statistic.
He is still the second highest wicket taker for a West Indian spinner in Tests. His economy rate of runs per over is the second lowest by any West Indian bowler just behind his little pal Alf Valentine. When he retired from Test cricket, he was the leading wicket-taker for the West Indies.
He came to England in 1950 to play for the West Indies after only playing two first-class games.
On the tour he took 135 wickets at an average of 14.88 created havoc among the English batsman both in the Tests and tour matches. This haul of wickets remains a record and is unlikely to be beaten. In the 1957 tour he claimed 119 wickets.
Roy added Sonny, the first East Indian to play for the West Indies, took more than 2,000 wickets in club cricket, including 601 wickets at an average of 7.5 in his first five years as pro at Crompton where, fittingly, his wake was held.
Another current record that will probably remain forever is bowling 98 overs in a Test innings was probably one he did not want when Peter May and Colin Cowdrey played football rather than cricket according to Sonny.
In total, he bowled 129 overs in that match, another record. Clyde Walcott, one of the famous three ‘W’s’ in that side, was the wicketkeeper to Sonny and said it took him a full match before he knew the way the ball was turning.
Nat King Cole’s ‘Unforgettable’ was played for private reflection which there was upbeat recessional music, Boney M’s ‘Sonny’.
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