Tributes have been pouring in for former Dominican, Winward Islands, Combined Islands and West Indies Test cricketer, Irving Shillingford, who has passed away.
Shillingford died in the morning of Thursday January 26, 2022 at the Dominica China Friendship Hospital. He was 78 years old.
Born in Dublanc, Dominica on 18 April 1944, Shillingford began his cricket career in his early teens. He later played with the West Indies cricket team in his 30s in four tests and two One Day Internationals (ODIs) in 1977 and 1978. The highlight of his career with the West Indies team was when he scored 120 in a test match against Pakistan which was played in Guyana in 1977.
Shillngford also played 88 first class games, 49 of them for the Combined Islands whom he represented from the inception of the team in 1961 until its dissolution in 1981. He also played first class cricket for the Windward Islands.
Sports commentator and former national cricketer, Ossie Lewis, has said that Shillingford was the best batsman ever produced by the Windward Islands and a great person, both inside and out.
“Irving Shillingford was arguably the best batsman ever produced by the Windward Islands, not just Dominica, and he was one of the best batsmen from the West Indies,” Lewis said during an interview with Dominica News Online (DNO). “Apart from that he was a fine human being, humble, honest and enthusiastic to help young people get on with their game and to improve.”
Lewis noted that they went to school about the same time and said he knew Shillingford from the time he played in the Windward Islands Interschools Tournament in Grenada at the age of 15 where he represented the Dominica Grammar School.
He pointed out that the accomplished Dominican and regional cricketer was also a selector on the West Indies board, a coach as well the manager of the Dominica cricket team.
Lewis is of the view that being from Dominica, Shillingford was the victim of insularity in the selection of the West Indies teams of the 1970s where preference was given to players from the “big islands like Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados and Guyana, [the] BIG4” and cricketers from the smaller islands had to be exceptional to make the West Indies team.
“Had Irving been alive today, with the standard today within cricket, [he] could easily have played numerous test matches,” Lewis declared. “He was one of the best produced by the West Indies, and injustice was done to him. He deserved to have been selected for many more test matches.”
According to Lewis, Shillingford was an icon and a great cricketing hero who left a great legacy to sportsmen who come after him adding that as long as cricket is played in Dominica, his name will be remembered as an outstanding batsman.
Meantime, PM Roosevelt Skerrit expressed his deep sadness on learning of Shillingford’s passing.
In a statement on his Facebook page, the prime minister said a true icon was lost.
“We have lost a true icon who brought great joy to the cricket-loving Dominican public. He stood as an example of all that was achievable for Dominican players of the most beloved sport in the West Indies,” Skerrit stated.
He said the late cricketer who is still the only Dominican to have scored a test century, represented the dreams and aspirations of many Dominican cricketers who hoped to achieve similar glory.
“He never lost his love for the game, leading his local club, Cavaliers, well into his 60s and inspiring young cricketers to pursue their own passion for the sport. He also served for many years as a national selector,” the prime minister added.
He said Irving Shillingford was a source of pride and his name is forever etched in the minds and hearts of the Dominican people.
“We will continue to honor his memory and celebrate his legacy. On behalf of the Government and People of Dominica, I extend sincere and heartfelt condolences to his family and others who mourn his passing,” Prime Minister added.
According to the ESPN Sports Media Ltd website, Irving Shillingford was a “gifted” batsman who made his first-class debut aged 16, but had to wait another four years for his second appearance, when he impressed batting No. 3 against the touring Australians – thereafter he scored consistently for more than a decade without coming close to international recognition.
“A superb 1976-77 season finally saw him called into the West Indies side at the age of 32 for the second Test against Pakistan, where he made 39 and 2, but in the third Test at Georgetown he blasted 120, but by the end of the series he had lost his place in a powerful batting line-up, “ ESPN Sports stated
They said he was again in “excellent form” the following season, hitting his career-best 238 against Leeward Islands at Castries, and when the Packer rebels disappeared he was given another chance, against Australia in Guyana.
He made 3 and 16 and was again dropped. In a different era Shillingford would have made far more than four Test appearances.
Shillingford had made the most runs in the shell shield the previous season, with 257, and though he was aged nearly 33 he was given the chance. He made 39 from number five in the first West Indies’ innings – in an 81-run partnership with opener Roy Fredericks, helping the West Indies to a lead of 136 runs on first innings. Shillingford only made two runs in the second innings, but the West Indies still won with six wickets to spare.
Shillingford continued to play domestic cricket until 1981-82 enjoying a Shell Shield victory with his Combined Islands team in 1980-81and also playing four matches for the windward islands the following season. However, his final season was not his greatest – with 112 first class runs at a batting average of 18.66, he failed to pass fifty a single time, though his team finished second in the Shell Shield table.
Former Dominica prime minister, manager of the Windward Islands cricket team and president of the Dominica Cricket Association, Edison James described Shillingford’s passing as a great loss for the country, “the sporting world, particularly cricket in Dominica and throughout the region and beyond.”
James, who was speaking on the SportsWrap programme on Q95, said his relationship with Shillingford started many years ago when they were both students at the Dominica Grammar School.
“We have a little joke between us that I virtually made him because we had a competition playing second form against first form; I had this opportunity to run Irvin out. [I was] standing close to the stumps and I decided I’m going to throw the ball at the stumps and I missed and he went on to score a hundred so I always tell him, ‘Irving, had I gotten you out then, your career would have finished.’
James, who says he was pleased to have had the opportunity of managing Irving Shillingford at the Dominica, Windward islands and Combined Islands levels,
“Irving was always a pillar, a go-to person to get advice and guidance and so on. He was never a difficult player to manage,” James added.
James believes that Shillingford earned his position as a West Indies player at the same time as former West Indies cricketer and captain Clive Lloyd.
“I remember Clyde Walcott, former West Indies manager and former international cricketer of great repute; I remember him being at my home in Dominica, he having been invited by us to be our guest speaker and raising with him, the matter of Irving not having been selected before and he told me, to my surprise and other emotions as well, he told me Irving was never considered and I’m wondering about that,” the former regional cricket administrator recalls. “How could it be? I believe that if Irving had been given his opportunity at the same time as Lloyd and these others, he would have been as renowned an international cricketer as Lloyd was.”
James goes on to point point out that when, in the later years of his life, Shillingford was eventually called up by the West Indies, he scored 120 runs in the second game.
“I remember that sterling motorcade which met him, the group which met him and the motorcade came in from Melville Hall to Roseau because I think the Pakistan side he had played against in Guyana and scored the 120 came in at the same time to play, probably Windwards in Dominica,” he recounted. “I remember that motorcade when the whole of the country was there to welcome him…so Irving has been part of this country’s cricketing history and it’s a pity that…well, everyone has to go but it’s a great loss to our country.
James also expressed his wholehearted support for the idea of establishing a cricket hall of fame where people like Irving Shillingford and other Dominicans who have excelled in the field of sports, can be honoured and highlighted as a source of inspiration for Dominicans.