EASTON McMorris was about 10 years old, in the mid-1940s, when he was captured by cricket.

Having recently moved with his mother and siblings from Kencot in St Andrew to Lacy Road in east Kingston, he and an older brother walked into the neighbouring Lucas Cricket Ground, one Sunday afternoon.

That’s when he got his first glimpse of the legendary West Indies and Jamaica batsman George Headley, arguably the most famous Jamaican of that time. Ironically, Headley wasn’t playing cricket, he was kicking around a football.

“George was playing scrimmage football in pants and shirt and somebody pointed him out and said ‘that’s the great George Headley’,” McMorris told the Jamaica Observer.

From watching Headley play football, the young McMorris entered the Lucas club house to be confronted by magnificent black and white photos of Headley “in his sweater” batting at Lords and other English grounds during the West Indies tour of England in 1939.

Photos of Headley fielding in the slips also stayed with the boy. The experiences that Sunday “sort of triggered my passion for cricket”, said McMorris.

That passion provided the platform for the development of an orthodox right-hand batsman with a superb defensive technique. It was a technique so sound that the great Headley is said to have advised young batsmen learning their trade to “watch McMorris”.

The latter matured to become among Jamaica’s most successful openers, scoring 5,906 runs in 95 first class games for an average of 42.18. Test match cricket proved much more of a struggle for McMorris.

In 13 Tests between 1958 and 66 in the Caribbean and on two tours of England, McMorris scored 564 runs for an average of 26.85.

His finest moment in Test cricket came in 1962 — Jamaica’s year of independence from Britain — raising his bat before his home crowd at Sabina Park, having registered his only Test century.

That proved to be McMorris’s best Test series by far. He scored 349 runs in six innings for an average of 56 against the high-quality Indian spin attack.

Born “under the clock” in Kingston on April 4, 1935 to mother, Inez Ashley and father, E A McMorris, a Harbour Street-based merchant tailor, Easton Dudley Ashley St John McMorris and his siblings grew up in relative comfort.

“I felt privileged growing up; we were never short of anything,” says McMorris, who captained Jamaica in the last phase of his first class career.

His eyes opened and passion kindled by that fateful Sunday afternoon visit to Lucas, McMorris was constantly playing cricket with other boys in every available space, close to home, in east Kingston.

In those days, cricket-playing boys in the eastern part of the capital citymfavoured what they called ‘mad man ball’, bought for a penny from mentally ill men, over the fence, at Bellevue Hospital on Windward Road.

McMorris recalled that the balls contained a hard, round core, completed by knitted twine and cord, wrapped “round and round”.

According to McMorris “the mad man ball was a good ball until it got soft”.Backyard cricket with mad man ball apart, McMorris played the sport at his school, Rollington Town Elementary, which had a rich reputation for producing Jamaica players.

In January 1949 he moved on to high school at the all-boys Kingston College, already a mighty force in schools cricket despite having been in existence for only about 23 years at the time of McMorris’s arrival.

By his early to mid-teens, McMorris, nicknamed Bull, was also playing lower-grade cricket for Lucas Cricket Club, most notably the Carib Cup, which also embraced some of Jamaica’s leading business houses.

Since the Carib Cup was played on Sundays, the young McMorris kept missing Sunday school and church.

Matters came to a head one Sunday morning as he was about to leave home.

“My mother decided this is going too far, she wanted me to go to Sunday school. I begged her, I said ‘look Mummy I am playing for Lucas and I am doing fairly well’ and she said ‘I don’t know about doing so well’…,” recalled McMorris.

Finally, after much pleading, his mother relented. If he made runs that day he could continue to play on Sundays, she said.

If not, it would be back to Sunday school.

The determined youngster made “30-odd or 40-odd” and to cap it all, a report confirming his performance came out in the newspaper. “I showed her the clipping, so I got freedom now to continue to play and to miss Sunday school,” he recalled.

There was more reward as a result of the newspaper report. His proud father bought him a pair of cricket boots for four pounds, ten shillings, which McMorris described as “a lot of money in those days”.

A high point for McMorris in those early years was playing alongside the legendary Collie Smith at Kingston College.

A highly talented all-rounder, Smith died in a car crash in England in September 1959 having played 26 Tests. Garfield Sobers, Smith’s close friend, was driving at the time of the crash.

According to McMorris, Smith was “a wonderful human being, unselfish, kind, helpful… if you needed help, Collie would help you”.

A powerful striker of the cricket ball, nicknamed the Mighty Mouse, Smith also played cricket with good sense. McMorris recalled at Kingston College having to chase more than 200 runs in very little time one afternoon against Kingston Cricket Club in a Minor Cup game.

McMorris dropped anchor at one end, after his fellow opener Alfred Francis was run out, and Smith started hitting the ball “all over the place”.

At about 6:00 pm with the sun dropping over the western horizon and light disappearing, a dispute developed over whether one shot had gone for four or six.

“Collie said ‘come, come, that not important’ and proceeded to hit off the remaining runs and win the match. Collie made a century and if it wasn’t for him that game would have ended in a draw,” said McMorris.

He recalled with a chuckle that some suggested he deliberately ran out Francis to bring Smith to the crease.

“That wasn’t true,” McMorris said, still chuckling. To illustrate the kind of person Smith was, McMorris told of his own debut Test match against Pakistan in Trinidad in 1959. McMorris had a problem with a painful ‘corn’ on his left little toe.

“Collie came to my room and pared the corn off for me…he was a human being of true class,” he said.

Smith was also very good at putting others at ease. In a school game against Jamaica College in 1951, McMorris recalled dropping a ‘sitter’ off Smith’s off spin.

Annoyed, McMorris kept berating himself, only to be consoled by Smith: “Bull,” he said, “yu gwi play against St George’s next week, all yu haffi do is tek di nex catch that come to yu.”

With McMorris totally caught up in cricket, Hurricane Charlie struck Jamaica in August 1951, disrupting every aspect of life, including sport.

Competitive cricket did not resume until very late that year. He was back in the swing of things in early 52, making his first Senior Cup century for Lucas against Kingston Cricket Club before his 17th birthday.

Such were his performances that cricket analysts, including leading cricket writers of the day, were speaking of him as one to watch. One even suggested he be fast-tracked to the Jamaica team.

In early 1954 and again in 1955, McMorris played for Jamaica Colts against touring England and Australian sides.

Those were the days before schedules became too crowded for comfort, when touring cricket teams everywhere in the world had plenty of opportunity to acclimatise through practice and competitive games before Test matches.

McMorris had to wait until 1956 before making his first class debut for Jamaica. That season he also got his first glimpse of a clutch of impressive young batsmen coming through in Guyana (then British Guyana) including Basil Butcher, Rohan Kanhai and Joe Solomon, while on a Jamaica Colts team visit to Antigua.

That tournament included Colts teams from Jamaica, Guyana and Combined Islands.

In early 1957 McMorris scored his maiden, first class century against a touring team from England, the Duke of Norfolk’s XI.

Just as importantly he made a half-century, opening the innings for a Jamaica XI against the West Indies team then in its final preparation phase for the 1957 summer tour of England.

The West Indies Captain John Goddard was very impressed, fingering the young McMorris as a future West Indies opener. The boy from Lacy Road was now on the brink of the big times.